Adam Torres and Mark Mears discuss 4-D Brand Alignment.
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Show Notes:
4-D Brand Alignment examines ones, personal brand, internal brand, external brand and employer brand. In this episode, Adam Torres and Mark Mears, Founder & Chief Growth Officer of LEAF Growth Ventures, LLC, explore 4-D Brand Alignment and Mark’s books, The Purposeful Growth Revolution: 4 Ways to Grow from Leader to Legacy Builder, and his recently released, Mission Matters: World’s Leading Entrepreneurs Reveal Their Top Tips To Success (Business Leaders Vol. 10, Edition 13).
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About LEAF Growth Ventures, LLC
Based upon my upcoming book, “The Purposeful GROWTH Revolution” he help individuals, teams and organizations find their purpose to fulfill their true GROWTH potential. he do so by using a model featuring 4 integrated processes – Leadership, Engagement, Accountability & Fulfillment – all revolving around purposeful GROWTH. I am available for Speaking and Consulting opportunities.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. Alright, so we have a very special episode today. We’re bringing back Mark Mears onto the show.
We’re celebrating that the book we’ve been working on, I don’t know if Maybe the last year. So it’s finally out live it’s in the world and we are promoting it. So for those of you who, who didn’t catch some of our previous episodes, Mark is the founder and chief growth officer over at leaf leaf growth ventures.
And he’s also an author previously as well. So got his book right here. We’ll be doing a recap on that as well. But first of all, Mark, I know that’s a long intro, man, but the more you come on the show, the more you do with us together as we collaborate, the longer it gets. Welcome back, man. Hey, Adam, it’s always great to be with you and your listeners and viewers today.
Oh man. And Oh, one other thing I forgot on the intro, you’re going to be our first speaker on the on the online and virtual event that we’ll be launching with our mission matters, MXM brand. So more to come for everybody listening on that. But I thought I, I dropped that in as well. And then we can we can start this episode, Mark, the way that we start them all with what we call our mission matters minute.
So, Mark, we at Mission Matters, we amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s our mission. Mark, what mission matters to you? Great question, Adam. I actually wrote a purpose statement not too many years ago, and it is I don’t want to just make money and retire. I want to make a difference and inspire.
And that means making a difference in the lives of others and inspiring them to want to do likewise and what I call paying it backward. So when I go to Starbucks and I know we’ve talked about this, but I think it’s really important. It’s, you know, important for me to live up to my mission. And I pay it backward by buying a copy for the car behind me.
And for that moment they’re feeling blessed that someone thought of them. They don’t know, I don’t know them. And when I drive away, I say a silent prayer that they’re having a great day and, and so I can’t pay it for the car in front of me, they’ve already gone. And then what I find is by paying it.
behind me, it creates a chain reaction. It’s called the law of reciprocity, where if you do something nice for someone and they feel led to do something nice for someone else, oftentimes in greater measure. So that’s that ripple effect or that expanded benefit that I really believe is my mission. So first off, thank you for sharing that.
And as I kind of, and we’ve gotten to know each other more and I, I, I get an idea for what you’re doing and how you’re doing it and, and the more business leaders, I, I just interviewed through the course of doing what I do. It’s interesting because this concept of pay it backward, I feel like at one point.
It was like just something that you should do. Like it’s something that’s good. It’s something that feels good. It’s something that, but as you said, this law of reciprocity, like it also, I believe makes, you know, good business sense to do this. Can you maybe talk a little bit on that? Yeah. You know, that’s a wonderful segue because those of us who were spiritually inclined, you know, that we’re supposed to treat.
Others the way we treat ourselves, right? Absolutely. And that’s just, you know, that’s just basic humanity. Yeah but what you brought up businesses, which I think is really really important and I Happen to serve as a senior leader network member for an organization a global organization called conscious capitalism Inc and their mission aligns very closely with mine Which is elevating humanity through business.
So the way I look at it, governments have not proven to be all that effective of getting after some of the world’s biggest problems, organizations and nonprofits can only do so much, but businesses actually have the resources. If they’re used correctly to make tremendous impact. In not only their own communities across our countries, but even in the world at large.
And to me, that is so important. And that’s why I call it the purposeful growth revolution. It’s a movement about awakening businesses to the opportunity and I’ll say the responsibility to give back in a way that enhances all four of their stakeholders. Their customers or clients or guests, their business partners, anybody in their business ecosystem and their communities is, is the recipe for for growth in the right way, purposeful way.
And I know there’s like a lot of different ways to give back. So meaning some give back with. money, some give back with time, some give back with expertise, some people volunteer. I mean, lots of different ways to volunteer to give back. And I can just say, you know, admission matters as we’ve kind of evolved like a new KPI that I’m introducing and I’ve introduced over this last year is really how much we give back is not now a portion of the book proceeds that we actually that we sell.
Are going back to different, various nonprofits, depending on the ones that we’ve worked with for different themes. And I won’t go too far into that, but the, the whole point of me bringing that up though, is that I feel like we can always be doing more, like we’re not a big company, like for, we’re not a big, like, and that’s not our main.
thing that we do in terms of like advertising, like it’s not a fundraiser to sell books or for us or to that. That’s our business. Like we’re providing a service to the business community. We’re providing knowledge, like us choosing to give something back in the way that we can is us trying to go further down that path of, of what I’m guessing the conscious capitalism, even organization is all about.
Absolutely. And, and, you know, what I love about mission matters not to give you free advertising, you don’t need it, but it, you know, it says we amplify stories and we know stories have power. They have actually been around since the dawn of man. And so we learn from each other and, and not just how to do our businesses better.
But maybe how we can make a greater impact to your point in the world And I loved what you said about we’re a small company, but and you don’t have to you know, apologize for that, you know Over 80 of business in america is is done through what’s called small businesses But i’ll tell you if you put your life savings into your business, it ain’t small to you Oh, yeah, right and then also i’ll hear people talk about well once we get you know, a certain level of profitability and we’ll be in a position to give back.
It’s like, no, you’re missing the point. You need to build it into your business model and you will then see growth because it’s not purpose or profit. It’s purpose and profit. Countless examples of companies, big, small, you know, solopreneur like me can make an impact with our time. To your point, our talents, our treasures or triumphs and travails, which is this idea of mentorship.
It’s talking about experience. It’s relating stories. To help others along their growth journey and collectively, we all win. Hmm. Wonderful. Yeah. And that was one of the things that I feel was holding us back for a while was that idea of like, well, we can’t like how much of it. And it was like, no, we have to put this in the design.
So I’m glad you put that like out there. We have to tie it to something that to the machine that we’re building. Like, that’s. So that’s why I look at a lot of businesses. It’s a, it’s a machine, you know, it can’t have a heart and, and a product and a soul, in my opinion, in terms of what they, what the mission, but it’s still, if you’re a machine, it’s meant to operate as a business.
So if you want a certain output, you got to put a certain input. Let’s shift it up a bit here. So I do want to spend some time talking about the content in, in the new book that we released together. And of course, we’re going to talk about the purposeful growth revolution. So four ways to grow from legacy to legacy builder.
We’re going to talk about that of course, as well. But just look, let’s start out with a revolutionary 40 brand alignment. Putting the human back and human resources which is the content you contributed for our latest release. A lot of different things you could have done. I mean, you got a ton of expertise under your belt.
Why this topic? Why now? Really Adam, it’s, it’s so timely and relevant and because of COVID and, and the tremendous downstream impacts of COVID it’s almost as if it gave people a time out. To kind of understand maybe or be introspective and figure out not only what but who matters most in their lives Right, and so we’ll start with the word revolution.
I looked it up in the dictionary There’s three different definitions and I thought they were really relevant to this Place in time. So the first definition of revolution is an uprising of the people. Well, the Sloan School of Management at MIT did a survey of 34 million Americans who left the workforce during COVID and asked them a simple question.
The number one answer, Adam, over 10 times greater than the second most given answer, was toxic work environment. Wow. And compensation didn’t come up until number 16 on the list. Wow. It’s as if people were saying, I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore. I don’t want to go back to work environment.
That makes me think of like, back in the day, it may be like a factory or something like, I don’t even know. Like, but you wouldn’t think of that when, you know, people are just going to work. It’s interesting. No. And I think we’ve all tolerated a command and control style. For so many years and younger people today are saying, I’m not sure I, that’s not my expectation.
So McKinsey did some research and found that nearly two thirds of the folks they surveyed during COVID said they had now reflected more deeply on their purpose in life. And nearly half said they were reconsidering the kind of work they did. Because of the pandemic and millennials were three times more likely to say they were re evaluating work.
So this idea of revolution being an uprising of the people, it’s happening. And we’re seeing deeper levels of disengagement, quiet quitting. That’s I guess what the kids call it these days. So purpose matters. And so the second definition is a dramatic change in the status quo. Do you think we’ve had a dramatic change in the status quo over the last few years, not only with COVID and hybrid or remote working and this thing called chat GPT with AI and machine learning?
I mean, it’s as if you know, all this, all these trends were moving in this direction, but it was almost like someone put it in a microwave, turned it on high, right? It just accelerated and amplified the development curve by probably several years. And then the third definition is this idea of a circular orbit around an object.
So what are we revolving around? And I’ll say it’s, it’s us, it’s, it’s, it’s our purpose and that we have to feel like we’re whole people. And so I believe we should start with who, not why, and sorry, no offense to Simon Sinek, starting with who specifically who we serve. And I believe there are four realms of service.
They’re spiritual. Relational, professional and personal were whole people and we need to feel comfortable bringing our whole self into the workplace. And so that’s why I say put the human back in human resources. I want to go further in this concept of these four different parts that you mentioned, because to me, like this was when I read this.
And I mean, I kind of hadn’t really thought of some of these things because I was, I’ll be up front. I was a great corporate America guy. I’m probably was a better corporate America guy than I was, than I am an entrepreneur. I’m learning. I’m getting better. I’m building mark. And I’ve been very, you know, have a amazing team and a lot of individuals around me that care and that help.
And that whether they work for me or not. But that being said, I was a great corporate America guy and I was I was just good at it. I was good at following orders. I was good at like, you know, checking the boxes, doing what I had to do. So when I read your work it was almost like permission. Like, Oh, wait a minute.
I can like, I never really thought about like how much time we spend at work collectively, how much of our life it is. And. When you cut out some of these other pieces or you don’t bring those in, it’s almost like there’s like a 30 year life or for me, I worked a whole lot more than that. That’s just been my path.
That’s what I enjoy doing. I’ve always been in careers I’ve enjoyed. So I’ve always put a lot of effort and time into them. I didn’t necessarily always have to, but I love what I do. I always have. Whether it was when I was a financial advisor or now with mission matters, like I just love it. So that being said I almost have permission after reading this because I never thought of it from these angles to like be whole throughout my day.
Can you kind of maybe just talk a little bit, like maybe a level deeper into these different of these different parts? Yeah. Well, I’ll, I’ll start with the the four kind of spiritual, relational, personal, professional realms of service. Because if you just start with why, what lights you up, that’s great.
But I believe we should start with who, because, you know, you think about who you serve. And I remember working crazy hours and Long commutes. I live in LA too. And you know, I actually commuted by a plane on a few different assignments, right? So, and I thought about all of those early mornings or late nights or weekends for my family.
But I remembered, and I had this clear mental image in my mind as to who I served. And again, spiritual, you know, relational, personal and professional. And if you think about that, you know, who you serve, there’s a sense of duty. Right. And when you have this sense of duty you, you feel like it’s not really a sacrifice that you’re really doing something for this greater good.
Now, when I look at that as a Venn diagram that overlaps, four circle Venn diagram, if I say spiritual, And as a spiritual person, I don’t say, well, God, I’ll see you on Sunday, but I got to go to work on Monday. So catch you next week. Right? I take my spiritualism into my work. I also look at my relationships, whether it’s a spouse or kids or extended family or neighbors or communities.
And I say, what duty do I have to them? That’s another thing. And then I look at professional. It’s my co workers. It’s my brand. If I’m a publicly traded company, it’s my shareholders, but it’s all those stakeholders that I’m working for. And then I’m looking at myself and going, I better be working for me too, because if I don’t take care of my mind, my body, my spirit, and my soul, I’m no good to those other three realms of service.
So there’s this notion of humanity and looking after myself. And it’s what they tell you on the airplanes, right? If there’s a sudden loss in cabin pressure, a mask will come down. Please put it over your hands and mouth or your mouth and before you assist other passengers, right? So we’ve got to look after ourself.
And so it’s all interrelational, but it’s all revolving around purposeful growth. It makes sense. And I mean, the way that you say it, it sounds, I won’t say easy. Sounds like some simple concepts, but it’s all in the implementation, like with anything in business, in my mind. There’s like, and I, obviously there’s only so much we can cover and, you know, one particular podcast interview.
And of course, and we’re going to get into your book. So we’re going to obviously pick this up. And this is, you know, in my opinion, one of the great starts. So in terms of somebody going down this path, but somebody that’s listening to this, if they’re hearing these ideas, they’re thinking about like, they have that kind of like, aha moment.
Like I, you know, I hadn’t really thought of things like that. And they’re thinking about where to. Start this journey. I feel like in so many things, like the start is some of the hardest things, like going to the gym, whatever it is, go once, go again. Like it’s all that starts always hard in my opinion. Like where does somebody start when they start going down this new ideology?
Well this is where, you know I’ve actually got a new concept. That is so simple. I was in a LinkedIn newsletter I wrote in February. I was trying to come up with something linked to my book, but also to the, the season of love because Valentine’s day. And I got to think in love. You know by putting the human back in human resources, all we need is love, but it’s not the kind of love that’s going to get you a quick call from HR and escort out of the building.
It’s the idea of listen, observe, value, and empower. And if you think about that, we all need to be seen and heard right to feel like we’re like we’re there. We’re somebody right? So listening to somebody on a deeper level, understanding the who they serve, the why they do what they do, the how they’re uniquely gifted, their superpowers, and then the what they do, then you’re going to be a better leader because you’re listening to them and also listen not only to what they say, but what they don’t say.
Think about what fears what anxieties, what worries might they have at home beyond the work? And because they’re going to bring that to work, right? And they’re not going to do it overtly, but it’s still going to impact them. So if someone’s worried about AI taking their job, or how do you listen to that?
What about inflation or what about, you know this impending recession that we keep hearing about? There’s a lot of fears that people are going through over and above when that when we were in the midst of COVID, right? Observe them. And by observing them, I’m not talking about an annual performance appraisal.
I’m talking about real time coaching. I live here in Kansas city, home of the world champion, Kansas city chiefs. Well, Andy Reed wouldn’t wait till the end of the season to coach. He does it all the time, every practice, every film session. Or every game and it provides people with what they need to be their very best and so then doing them valuing as that whole person, not just as a worker, but valuing them by giving them opportunities to learn and grow.
And develop and then finally empower them, you know, the wind beneath their wings and let them soar And and if they fall down pick them up dust them up dust them off and and put them right back out there because we know That if someone feels empowered They’re going to be engaged with their heart their head their hands and their habits And they’re going to take a greater degree of ownership in the outcomes.
They’re going to naturally work harder. And they’re going to also want to pay it backward to help others along their journey because they’ve drunk the Kool Aid and they want to share it with us. And that just, again, provides a ripple effect of positivity and benefit across all stakeholders in an organization.
In your writing, you you, you, you mentioned multiple multiple case studies. So you talk about Patagonia, you talk about Canva, talk about KPMG. I want you to maybe we’re not going to get into all of them for everybody watching, just so you know, cause Hey, we want you to pick up the book still. Of course.
So if you sell a link in the bio, so you can do that, but when you have a moment, but Mark, I do want you to maybe. Any of the three, I don’t know or any of those maybe kind of go into a little bit of what you talked about in the book to give people a flavor for your writing. Yeah, I think, you know, those are all great examples.
You know, Canva is a, you know, online design service firm based in Sydney, Australia. And they’ve been around now, I want to say 10 years, but they have essentially it. Wow. I didn’t realize that base of technology, as I mentioned this whole microwave, but they’re now over 41 billion in revenue, but they have a simple two step process, which is.
You know Grow the the biggest, you know company we can but also do the most good so all their values are stacked around that idea of these two simple things And so they they integrate their value they connect it to their business model so many times when I Talk to people about purpose. They’re like, yeah, that sounds fluffy.
That sounds airy, fairy cotton candy. You know, we, we have to make a bottom line profit or hedge will roll. It’s like, oh, yeah, that’s so Neanderthal. Yeah. But, but these companies that put their purpose, which is their vision, their mission, their values, how they work together in action. Right. Not just as empty platitudes on a poster on a wall that you salute when you walk by, but connect them to their four stakeholders, their team members, their guests or customers or clients, their business partners and their communities.
And they’re living it out and they’re some of the most profitable firms in their space. So again, you build it into the business model that you don’t wait for some extra cream to skim off the top afterwards. So there are countless examples in case studies of companies who do that, but here’s how they, it reflects back to this idea of 4d grand growth.
Right. The four dimensions of a brand. I was just having coffee this morning talking about branding and the guy said, yeah, well, brands are the external face of the company to the client or customer guest. That’s one part of it, but there are four parts. He said, really tell me, well, I’m going to tell you the first dimension, going back to that four circle Venn diagram is personal brand.
We all have a personal brand, whether we know it or not, and it answers the question, who am I? And what value do I add to the organization? Then we have the internal brand, which is that collective. We now we’re a member of a broader team. What do we stand for? Then we have the external brand that my friend was talking about, and that is external facing as the name suggests.
So it’s externally facing to your ultimate. User or client or customer or community, and then not to be forgotten, we have our employer brand that answers the question, do I belong here? And so why that’s so important, Adam, is that we talk about DEI and we should, we should make more progress on doing it the right way, not just checking a box.
So the way I look at it is diversity just gets you in the door. Inclusion gets you a seat at the table. And equity gives you an equal voice. Well, that’s not bad, but if you don’t feel a sense of belonging, then you’re most likely not to, you know, going to feel comfortable being vulnerable enough to give up your very best.
You’re just going to be happy to be in the room where it happens to quote Hamilton. And you’re not going to want to rock the boat. So this idea of belonging is so important and it ties back to what I believe in words matter. A lot to me is culture is not a bad word, but culture is maybe somewhere you might just feel a part of, I believe community is a better word because that’s a place where you feel like you belong in.
So how we go back to leaders today. And build them into legacy builders and i’m not talking about the kind of legacy after you’re dead and buried and you bequeath Value to someone i’m talking about every day a living legacy It’s putting in place these tenants that i’ve been talking about. It’s integrating the four dimensions of the brand But understanding in the middle of all of it is purposeful growth and putting the human Back in human resources at the end of the day, whether, you know, the robots or the zombies or AI takes us away, we’re all still humans, right?
And we have to understand that and treat people that way. And we’ll get the very best out of them and our enterprise will thrive as a result. Yeah. Well, once we get talking about brand, you and I know we can talk. All day long, we’ve had some great conversations about that and we’ll go further, but I want to want to shift focus here.
I want to spend some of the time that we have left on the purposeful growth revolution. So four ways to grow from leader to legacy builder. And this would be, I mean, this is in my opinion and correct me if I’m wrong. I mean, this is the, the big body of work in the core of your, your, your philosophy and this, and this movement yearly, you’re leading my off on that.
No, it’s actually a playbook, Adam. I mean, if you read it, start to finish and it’s, it’s not a little thin, you know, sideways. That’s a book. It is based on literally years of my experiences, personally, my observations of those who I admire best practices that I’ve incorporated research to substantiate it.
My thesis as well as I’m, I’ve curated kind of subject matter experts that can go deeper in certain areas that I can go. And I, I used the word curated on purpose. ’cause I really wanted this to be a curated reading experience. Yeah. It’s not me talking at you, it’s me talking with you. Mm-hmm. . But it’s me sharing and paying it backward by, by, you know, articulating.
Some wonderful lessons that I’ve been able to learn and some mentors who’ve invested in me and some experiences that I’ve been blessed to have. And I wanted to use it as a way to create this movement around purposeful growth and why purpose matters. Is this twofold? If you think about research that was done by the science of purpose the case for purposeful growth for individuals.
It says Individuals with a connection to their purpose experience 63 increase in wealth leadership effectiveness and fulfillment They learn twice as much. They’re four times more engaged. And get this are 175 percent more productive. That’s almost two people worth, right? Yeah. But now companies with a connection to their purpose.
Have higher margins as purposeful firms are 30 percent more innovative and get this 73 percent of customers will switch to higher purpose brands and pay more for them Yeah, they’ll have higher levels of retention and tenure and 54 percent more fulfilling work relationships. So this idea of Purpose being kind of a fluffy concept is not true.
It’s based on research. It’s based on case studies. And so this idea of creating this movement is reawakening people to the importance of purposeful growth, not just growth for the sake of profit, but profiting all stakeholders. What do you think? And I mean, you’ve been obviously you’ve been working on this for I shouldn’t say obviously, but you you’ve been working on this for a long time.
You work and we’ll talk a little bit about about leaf growth ventures as well. But what do you think? Because now having helped and work with so many companies, corporations and otherwise, what do you think kind of holds People back from, and I know it’s not a one size fits all. Every company is going to be different.
I get that. But you know, you have a big sample of population of people you work with. Like, what do you think kind of holds people back from this, from this concept? Well, I’m going to be real candid ego and arrogance and ignorance. Okay. Ego is that I know it already. Ignorance is I don’t know what I don’t know, but I don’t care.
Yeah. And, you know, arrogance is more of that kind of like. You can’t tell me anything. There is a lot of that going on in leadership And so when someone starts talking about something that’s revolutionary That starts to get people to say well someone wants to move my cheese and I don’t want my cheese moved I work really hard to get in the c suite and I don’t want someone coming in and telling me that i’m not doing it Right and look we’re making money and look we’re they’re not Understanding the point we all can learn and I will say You know, one of the things i’ve always been told to stay green and growing And that’s how I live my life.
And that’s what I’m now using for the back half of my life and career with this whole purposeful growth revolution is paying it backward to help others along their growth journey. So change we’re all creatures of habit. We don’t really like change. It’s hard. It hurts. My brother gives me pain during change.
I’m like, ah, I gotta do something different. I hurts. They’re called growing pains for a reason. Myself here. I’m not the only business owner. Whoever’s out there laughing at me, you hurt too during change. Don’t even try it. Don’t judge me. But that’s where we grow the most is when things are you know, when we struggle, you know, for me writing this book, Adam, I’m telling you, there’s a chapter in there about get the FUD out, which stands for fear, uncertainty, doubt, and delay, like fear of failure.
I’m serial achiever. I know how to do my job and do it well. The, you know, idea of uncertainty, you know, am I willing to give up the safe status quo of a C level position to go into a solopreneurship and write a book this idea of doubt, you know, it’s kind of like those voices in the back of our head that we hear, and sometimes we listen to them and give them power, even though they’re self limiting beliefs of nobody knows me, I’m not some rock star CEO, so who wants to hear it from me?
And then finally, that leads to delay, right? Based on those three things, it’s like, okay, I’ll put it off. I’ll give myself a little shot of dopamine for make myself feel good for the moment, and I’ll get back to it later. Well, that’s how long it took me to write this book because it has been chasing me.
For several years until I finally listened and said, you know what, I got to do this. And having fulfilled that goal last fall, when it came out, I’m telling you, other than getting married and having twin daughters years ago having that book show up on my door from Amazon with my name on it was one of the most satisfying or fulfilling endeavors because I figured out I could do hard things.
I could do things I knew nothing about, and I could listen to a calling and follow it faithfully until I reached the objective. And that’s really the encouragement I would give your listeners, those who are entrepreneurs, is just don’t give up. Yeah. And I I mean, I’m, I may sound biased. And I am biased because I’m a publisher, but I always like, I preach on this show.
I’m like, get your story out there, get your message out there. Whatever you feel is your calling in terms of your message that you want to document that you want to help others with put it in a book like that. Even just that exercise of accomplishing it, your book. I mean, this is, this is a professionally published.
Beautiful. My first book. Oh my gosh, mark. If you’d see it, it was like, it looks like I put it together with duct tape, man. It was it was and actually on the cover and I still leave it on Amazon just because I use it. I leave it as a testament that anybody can write a book and put one out like Just period.
Like if you have a message, there’s an audience for it. My first book, I’m not kidding. You look at the cover mark and I think there was like a little shade on there. Like I left something or the designer left something literally has like a line going through the thing that lines are not supposed to be there, but, it was just it was amateur was this that but I’ll tell you that book helped a lot of people and it continues to help a lot of people and so like those that didn’t judge the book by the very bad cover they they still did it. So I mean, that’s my that’s my little rant about like Yeah Publish, publish with somebody, publish yourself, self publish, whatever you got to do and, and the rest of it, like there’s so many tools online, however you got to do it.
But what Mark just said, that wasn’t prompted, like that’s his true feelings on what he felt like when he got that book, you will feel the same way. Like, like it’s, it’s just, it’s just this different experience. Yeah. It’s that. I just will say also, Adam, that when, you know, your team reached out to me about partnering with you on another book, I started getting chills, , like, I just got finished with this one,
You’re like, no, but I’ll tell you, I, I, it’s, it’s, it’s ironic. I would, I will tell you, is that I had more to say, believe it or not, that’s a thick book and a lot was cut out of it, . Wow. And so I had more to say and some new ideas and. This, this book that you and I now have kind of co wrote and published is something that is really cool because I did not have this information in my first book.
Part of it, yes. The biggest chunk is 4D brand idea and putting the human back in human resources. It was even more timely based on the research that I just shared with you than even when my book happened. So, the point is. You know, well, I believe this concept of leaf is, is evergreen, no pun intended.
And it works in all industries, not just the retail, restaurant, hospitality, entertainment industries that I’m, I’m probably been involved in most. But now having a new angle on it, a new twist, a new idea. And then you providing a forum to share that I, I just found that again, very timely and relevant.
And Adam, I don’t believe in coincidences. Yeah, I don’t either. So it’s fun to be part of the journey. I’ll tell you with you. It really is. I wanna, let’s I want to spend a couple minutes here, though. I don’t want to, I’m not going to let you off the line, Mark. Leaf growth ventures. Tell us how you’re helping company.
I want our audience because at the end of this, I definitely want you to leave also contact information, websites, like how people can connect with you. Yeah. Leaf growth ventures and leaf is an acronym. It stands for leadership, engagement, accountability, and fulfillment, which is outlined in the third section of my book.
Again, all intertwined around purposeful growth. Well, I got that epiphany the day after unceremoniously being let go from a president’s role by a new company that had just come in. We were living in Southern California at the time, probably not far from you. And this was like February 21st. And that’s about the time that the first kind of signs of spring emerge Well after a fitful night of sleep, took the dog out back in the morning Dew was settling in The sun came over that wall in our backyard.
Adam has got as my witness It’s shown on this fig tree that was barren from the five or six weeks of winter. We do get in la right now And it There on one end of a branch was this tiny little green sprig of a leaf just starting to emerge. And it was there I got this epiphany that LEAF is a symbol of growth and rebirth as well as an acronym which stood for leadership, engagement, accountability, and fulfillment.
So what I’m doing now is in my LEAF growth ventures, I have different ventures, but they’re all around growth, purposeful growth. So it’s about inspiring individuals, teams, and organizations. To find purpose in fulfilling their true growth potential. And in doing so help make a positive, you know, impact on the world.
And so it’s speaking, it’s business consulting, and I’m working right now on a really cool e learning platform on my website, which is www. markamears. com. And I invite your viewers and listeners to go to that website. And you can take a free purposeful growth self assessment. It’s right there on the homepage.
Takes about five, six minutes tops. And you’ll get a chance when you’re have completed the assessment to then download your customized report, which will give you a score in each of these different areas. And it follows the four key sections of the book. And so that will give you kind of a benchmark or a foundation.
And then you will want to reach out to me to either hire me as a keynote speaker for your organization, or maybe come in and do some consulting, or maybe some personal one on one coaching. No, that’s great. And in terms of it, I just want to be clear on this one. So is it, are you, do you specialize in a particular industry, industry agnostic?
I know you mentioned some that you had experience in, but how does that piece of it work just so that the right individuals follow up with you? Yeah, it really could be anybody. So for example, this online purposeful growth plan that I’m putting together, it’s anybody at any level of any industry. Well, that sounds broad.
And as a marketer, you’re supposed to have, you know, niche targets and this and that. I’ve been told all that, but I’m telling you. It works. Because I’ve had the good fortune to work in a variety of different industries. And so again, we’re all people. I don’t care if you work in a widget manufacturing facility, I don’t care if you’re a postal worker, but every one of us are human beings.
And so following this plan this purposeful growth plan for your life and work to be more fulfilling is something I believe every everybody should want. And it sounds like that’s where the world of work is going. Yeah. And I’m trying to lead this movement. So listeners and viewers can also hit me up on LinkedIn.
Connect with me. Let’s start a conversation and I’d love to help you grow. Awesome. Website one more time. So everybody has it. It’s markameers. com. Don’t forget the A. I couldn’t get Mark Mears dot com. It’s not me being pretentious, but it’s on the book. Mark a Mears dot com. And you’ll see the four different ways to grow with me, the book speaking, consulting, and e learning when that gets completed.
Wonderful. And we’ll put all that information in the show notes so that our audience can can, can just click on it and head right on over. And also we’ll put the hyperlinks to the books, both books and the show notes as well. Well, so definitely pick up both books. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with mission matters or engaging in an episode, we’re all about bringing on business owners, entrepreneurs, executives, and experts, and having them share their mission, the reason behind their mission, you know, why they do what they do, like what motivates them to go out into the world and to make a difference.
If that’s the type of content that sounds interesting or fun or exciting to you, we welcome you hit. That subscribe button. If you haven’t already we, we definitely appreciate it. And and we’re also going to be bringing a lot more content to you as well. We’ve got many more mission based individuals coming up on the line.
Mark, again, thrilled to continue to promote are the book that we did together and your book, of course. So everybody watching this, go grab a copy. There’ll be a link in the show notes for you and Mark, really just great to connect. And also with this in our last time, as you know, we already got, we already got you on the hook.
Speaking of public speaking, we already got you on the hook for doing helping us with the launch of our new speaker series that’s coming up. So for everybody watching that, like go to the website, sign up for our newsletter. You’ll get more about this so you can see Mark and the speaker series we’re launching as well.
And, and Mark. So thank you again. Really appreciate you coming on the show. Adam. It’s always my pleasure. I look forward to our continued partnership.