Leadership Author Series - Mark Mears

You know, he serves as the founder and the chief growth Officer for Leaf Growth Ventures LLC, which is a consulting firm, and he's got some amazing content here that we have really become fans of. A lot of overlap in the dialogue that we have around leadership, a lot of approaches. So first and foremost, Mark, welcome to the show. Say hi to the audience.

you to this point about writing about this. What were the things that let you down this path to kind of have this moment of sharing this content with the world.

a journalism background, I fancy myself a decent writer. I love to communicate ideas and so years ago, I think it was February twenty first, twenty thirteen, I got an epiphany and it came to me the morning after a significant life event, and I had just been let go from a president's role for half a billion dollar casual restaurant concept that was owned by a publicly traded entity, and brought in as the president from the Cheesecake Factory, where I served as a senior BP and chief marketing

officer with three different objectives, turned the brand around it was down double digit negative in sales research and establish a new contemporary and relevant brand positioning and created kind of a new concept or concept extension that could earn the right to capital, and I took on the challenge, and my team and I we put together a wonderful plan that we faithfully executed and sacrificed and did a lot of early mornings, late nights traveling here and there,

but we accomplished all three of those objectives within two years. Instead of getting the capital that we earned the right to receive to grow, I heard we've decided to move in a different dread. The board wants to put the brand up for sale, But don't worry. You're going to lead the sale process and we'll give you a stay on bonus and a sale bonus if it happens, and if it doesn't happen, you go back to doing what you normally do. But you can't tell anybody confidential like,

oh my goodness, so that just happened. Well, we worked through all of that process and we had a lot of tire kickers, a lot of private equity firms. We found a strategic play that we thought was going to be our rightful owner. For a lot of reasons, we don't have time to go into The deal closed on a Friday, and we're drinking champagne, celebrating over the weekend. And on Monday morning, I had a meeting scheduled with

the new CEO at eight o'clock. And this meeting was scheduled for two weeks out, so we were going to plot our new future together. At eight oh five, I'm out the door. We've decided to move in a different direction, and I'm like what Over the weekend? So I learned a valuable lesson of the world of corporate America. And so I'm living in southern California at the time, and that February twenty first date I mentioned is about the time we start to see the first signs of spring,

not here in Kansas City, but in southern California. And after a fitful night of sleep, I took the dog out the next morning early. And you've always heard the term as the darkest, always darkest before the dawn, And that was very apropos and dark in many ways, not just light, but in how I viewed myself and what happened and what could I have done different. Oh, by the way, all of our executive team was let go within two weeks, and they moved the corporate office from

Orange County to their US headquarters in Dallas. So all things they said they wouldn't do, they did. And so I was frustrated that it wasn't smarter or wasn't able to see beyond the corner of what could have happened. And so I take the dog outside and we had a fig tree in our backyard that was barren from

the five or six weeks of winter. We do get, but Lorenzo as God as my witness, as the sun was coming up over the wall in our backyard, It's shone on that fig tree and there on the end of just one branch with this tiny little green sprig of a leaf just starting to bud. And there I got this epiphany that a leaf is a symbol of growth and rebirth. Here I was going through this dark woe is Me moment, and I'm getting this sign that

says it's going to be okay. Spring is coming and a leaf is not only a symbol of growth and rebirth. I used to lead with the rule of threes. You know, if you focus on three things, you know people can't deal with more than that, you'll be more productive and ultimately more successful. So my three things is part of that turnaround or leadership, engagement, and accountability powerful three things, right.

We need strong leadership up and down the ranks. We need to engage people's heart, head, hands, and habits in this process. And we need to ourselves and our team members accountable for results, because after all, we're a publicly traded company and now here we are going through a sales process which no one really knew until the last minute. And so I use that in all my weekly communications

reward and recognition. I'd say, Lorenzo's leading his team and they're doing this, and they're doing that where he's engaging them on a deeper level and they're getting these kinds of results, or he's holding them accountable for results. And now look what you sales are coming out of it. And everybody knew it, and it wasn't until that morning after I said something's missing. That approach should have worked. And that's one I believe now in the higher power

of force. Now I think about that leaf in spring, right, there are four directions. There are four seasons, not three. Therefore, chambers to the human heart not three. There are four elements to an atom, the source of all life, not three. I could go on and on with this for play, but you get the idea. And it hit me that what was missing for me was fulfillment. We were burning

the candle at both ends. We were doing this kind of heroic career altering project that we all could look back and be proud of, and yet we were not being fulfilled. We had the rug taken out from under us. And that's when I got this notion of this four circle event diagram, like the four seasons overlap, and it came to me that, yeah, we need strong leadership, we need an engagement of one's heart, head, hands, and habits. We need accountability up and down the ranks, but we

also need fulfillment. And so I came up with this model where that fig tree serves as my kind of idea around purposeful growth. It only knows how to be a fig tree. Its purpose is to grow fig leaves, where all growth happens in a plant or a tree through the magic of photosynthesis, right, But leadership represents the roots, the seed roots, and you have to have a strong,

solid root system to grow any plant or tree. Just like in business, you have to have strong leadership and that leads to alignment and then engagement is the trunk, the branches and the system of nourishment, which is called savia. I learned that it translates into lifeblood. What's the life blood of any organization, It's people. So the way engaging their hearthead, hands, and habits, you're giving them the result

of empowerment. And we know that empowered team members will give you more discretionary effort, they'll give you better and higher quality work, they'll have a stake of ownership in the outcome, and they'll be more loyal, whether it's staying in the firm themselves or recommending you to others. Right, But then we say, what's that plant or tree designed to do. That's where accountability comes in. And that's the

leaf and the fruit of the tree. And the cool thing about that fig tree is not only is it to go, oh, you know, fig leafs, but to bear fig fruit. And within that fig fruit come the achievement. And we'll get to later the fact that it also has seeds in it that can be scattered for future growth.

That then leads to the idea the foundation of all of it is, you know, fulfillment, and that's the environment that that nurturing environment, that has the soil, the sun, the rain that provides the balance necessary for photosynthesis to occur. And it's like the culture of any organization or we're going to get to the fact that I prefer the word community, and that really is where people feel like they belong and can do their best work. So the notion of Leaf and why I call it a revolution,

is it's all revolving around purposeful growth. It's revolving around being the best fig tree it can be in the environment it's in. It's being the best team member we can be within the environment we're in. And it's being not just a manager, but a leader and ultimately a living legacy builder, which we'll talk more about. But I got that epiphany several years ago and I started working on it, and then it became a book idea, and I kept putting it off and taking another C level

job and progressing in my career. But finally it caught up to me a couple of years ago. I said, if I'm going to do this, I've got to kind of put my W two corporate world by the side and really focus on this thing I felt called to do. And so I finished the book and now I'm using it as a foundation for speaking and consulting, and I'm working on an e learning platform that will help people

meld their purpose in both life and work. And it's led me to believe it or not write a second book, which we'll talk about.

Where am I going? How did I get here? What makes sense? And then all these dots kind of start to connect themselves naturally. And I think when that happens, it's just and I've had that moment in my life where then just like the creative juice is just flow, like it all makes sense now, everything has a place. Everything kind of calls back to things that I've experienced and things that I've seen in my leadership and things that I've seen in great mentors. So I love that,

and I know you know. I want to ask a couple of questions. We are going to take a break for just a second for some of our sponsors, but when we get back, Mark, I want to ask you about that the difference between a leader and a leg builder. I love that you use that language, and I love that there is a difference. And I talk about legacy a lot, so I can't wait to hear about this. But we will be right back after a few works from our sponsors. All right, Mark, leader and a legacy builder.

So walk me through what's the difference between these two things.

schools of management. We learned how to be a manager. But when I say that's transactional, it's like we're managing projects. We're managing timelines and budgets and resources and metrics of performance and people to get the job done right. Well, that might create a sense where if someone works for you, And by the way, my career, I've never said anyone

works for me. I say they work with me. Right, But in this hierarchical command and control style that I'm trying to transform, it makes someone say, if I'm working for you, I must obey you because you're a manager with a title that's bigger than mine and a voice that's bigger than mine. And so that becomes transactional. Now you have an opportunity as a manager to grow into a leader, and a leader is more relational someone I

want to follow. Right, But if I'm a legacy builder, it's more than just your Lorenzo the person I want to follow. Well, you're such a great leader, and I enjoy working with you so much that I want to lead like you when it's my turn to lead. And that's the living legacy that you bequeath to your team members. Right, it's not legacy. That means something you bequeath after you're dead and buried, something of value that you give to

a loved one. It's how do you treat your team members and lead them in a way that they not only want to follow you willingly, not just obey you, but they want to lead like you. And when I work for Pizza Hut in the PepsiCo world, back when they still owned us, we refer to that as your leadership shadow. So how are you casting your leadership shadow? Right? And I think that's really what people understand more and better today because I did you use the word mentors.

I had some wonderful mentors who walked alongside me, from my professor in advertising and marketing at the University of Kansas, doctor Tim Bankston, who taught me out of going to law school and into going to graduate school at Northwestern where I learned the feat of doctor Don Schultz, who came up with the whole concept of integrated Marketing Communications or IMC, which there are curriculums all over the world. Now I was on the early stages of that. I

was IMC before IMC was cool. Well, that then served as the bedrock or foundation for my marketing communications strategies going forward with all the brands that I work with. And then one brand I worked for easily the most inspirational leader, a guy named David Novak when I was at Pizza Hut, and he was ahead of marketing, and so then he later rose up the ranks within PepsiCo and then you know, became the co founder and CEO of Young Brands, which was the new organization that was

banded together after PepsiCo divested the restaurant brands. And I learned so much from him that I wanted to lead like him. And then I had another mentor, David Overton at the Cheesecake Factory, the founder and dynamic CEO and chairman, and just learned a lot of how to work and

how to always strive for excellence. So if I learned about inspiration, reward and recognition and the idea that the idea that big ideas moved business from David Novak, I learned about casting a vision and then organizing an organization around it. And we think about almost three hundred menu items, almost all made fresh from scratch, and it's been going on for over forty some years now, and I think that those are people that impacted my life to where

I now want to pay it backward. And that's why I ended up writing this book, was to take all of these key experiences and observation of those I admire, along with the curation of research that supports my thesis and subject matter experts that can go deeper than I can go, and I'm crafting what I call a curated reading experience that isn't just something you'll pick up in

an airport and finish when you land. It's a pretty lengthy tome, but it's been written carefully and thoughtfully and planfully to carry the reader through a journey with four key sections. You know, how do you cultivate your field for purposeful growth? And it's the you know, the reason why you know growth matters, the reason why purposeful growth

matters even more. And then it's planting your seed for purposeful self and that's all about the self reflective part of who am I, where do I want to go? And how do I get there? And then there's the third section, which is the medior section with the leaf growth model, and that's you know, kind of driving you forward for purposeful work, right, and then finally it's scattering

your seeds for purposeful life. And so if you think about that four circle band diagram, all of that is revolving around purposeful growth, and it's different for all of us. I created my own purpose statement a few years ago, and I wanted to drink my own kool aid, and I said, Lorenzo, 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. So

it creates this virtuous cycle of reciprocity. And that's what I call paying it backward because it's not paying it forward. Because when I go to Starbucks, and I'm a big coffee junkie and I'm also a growth junkie, so a little both one hand washes the other. I'll pay for the car behind me in an intentional active kindness, not

some random active kindness if the spirit moves me. But I kind of made that my thing because it fits perfectly with my purpose statement because when I do that, I go to the to carry out or drive through a counter and tell the person just tell them God bless you your debt has been paid, and they say, oh, that's so nice, And then I drive off and I

say a silent prayer for them. I don't know them, they don't know me, and I have no idea what they're going through in their life, but I'm merely praying for them to be blessed in some way by that intentional act of kindness. And there's a law of reciprocity, and it's truly a law proven by research. It says, when someone does something nice for you, you feel a deep urge to do something nice for somebody else, and

oftentimes in greater measure. So now imagine that person feeling blessed at someone in the car ahead of them cared enough about them to not only bless them with a cup of copy or two, depending on how many people are in the car, but an actual blessing. And don't you think they might want to do likewise for the car behind them, and the car behind them, and the

car behind them. I'm told it happens. So imagine the ripple of fact of just one active kindness or talking to and dealing with and loving on one team member who might be in your direct report. Once step Pebble goes in the pond, you don't see the pebble anymore, but you see the ripple on top of the water. Now, imagine if you have four or five direct reports, you have the opportunity for four or five pebbles, and now all of a sudden, exponentially you're reaching more people and

more lives. And so for me, that's what it's all about. Yeah, I love that.

do every single day. I also think, you know, you brought this up around the power and the time you have to spend figuring out who you are. And I love kind of the questions that you ask and how you talk about that. Because I was having this conversation not too long ago with Elizabeth Biennik who's also another

leadership author around. Sometimes we look in the mirror and we see the aspirational version of ourselves, who we want to be, who we think we should be, how we think we show up, and if we really want to be able to pour into others, we also have to pour into ourselves with an with with with an element of self accountability and and and a realization of that how we think we show up may not actually be

how we show up. And we have to do that work to ask those around us and bring them on the journey and be open enough to take that in. That's a critical piece.

And you're right, there is who you think you are, there's who you actually are, there's who others see you as being to your point about you know, getting feedback, and then there's who you ideally want to be, and so you have to understand each of those four circles, and there are diagnostic tools that are out there that can help you understand. You know, not only who you think you are, but who you actually are. And that

doesn't mean it's bad. It's like when you take disc or Myers Briggs or things like that, you're basically saying, here's who I am. Right. But if you just stop there and you don't get the feedback from people around you, because you know, perception is reality. It's not what you think, it's what they're seeing you as being, and they could help coach you and show you some blind spots that maybe you didn't know you had. And then finally it's like, Okay, who do you ideally want to be? And then the

next chapter tells you how you get there? Right, so the four dimensions of you? But I like what you said about yourself and so in this you know world of Simon Sinek start with why I love the model and I've admired it for a long time that I got to thinking, when I had the time to think, that we should actually start with who and specifically who we serve. And so if you think about it, there's a four circle then diagram. We serve personally ourselves, mentally, physically, emotionally,

and maybe financially. We serve you know, relationally, those we love and those who love us in our life, and we serve professionally in our workplace. You know, who do we serve? It could be our team members, be our superiors, it could be our clients or customers or you know, business partners. And then it's spiritually what do we believe and what binds all that together? And so for circle

bend diagram, we serve personally, relationally, professionally, and spiritually. That leads us to our why, which is our motivation or purpose are raised on to today. I'm sure I'm saying it wrong. I'm not French. That then leads us to our how. How are we uniquely gifted to help do something you know, positive in the world, and how are we going to invest ourselves and our gifts to do that? And then ultimately what do we do with the time that we're given? And I don't know, Lorenzo about you,

but for me, I know one thing. I don't know much, but we won't all have twenty four hours in a given day, not one of us has a minute more or a minute less, and so the what should be this collection of what do we stand for and what will we do to achieve whatever purpose we feel on our heart we should be working toward. And that's why I like the word purpose full more than just purpose, because purposeful is an action word. Purpose is down and it might seem like people are, you know, well, where's

my purpose? But if you're purposeful, you're working toward what it could ultimately and it could change multiple times during seasons of your life, and you don't have to get wrapped up into well, I'm age forty whatever, and I don't feel I have my purpose yet? How can I find? Where is it? You know, like it's some piece of

loss luggage. But you have to be not just open minded, but open hearted to receive the signals that may be around you, the dots that if you were to be open minded and open hearted, you could start connecting and see there's a red thread woven throughout things. For me, my career spanned restaurant, retail, hospitality, and entertainment. The red thread woven through all of it is servant leadership and feeling like hospitality of helping someone have their best day

or best moment. When I was Senior VP of Marketing and Sales at Universal Studios, Hollywood, I would be able to walk the park and I'd see people enjoying their best day, or at the cheesecake factory and seeing people celebrating a birthday and anniversary, or having just a wonderful time together over a meal in an over the top immersive dining experience. Those are things that lit me and continue to light me up. What is it for you? And so that's what led me to my purpose statement.

I said, I got to put this in writing because I want this to be the foundation for how I want to live the back half of my life and career.

dialogue to day around the book. You know, we're gonna we're gonna continue this dialogue in our in our Pillars and pitfallse new kind of section of the podcast here over onlines guide dot com. But first I want to say, please, if you have a checond go check out the Purposeful Growth Revolution Four Ways to Grow from Leader to Legacy Builder and check that out. We fully endorse it. We love the content, we think is extremely powerful and actionable.

But where else, Mark, Where else can people find you? How can they see more of your content? Where can they subscribe?

so that I can learn from you. And I know your listeners have a ton of experiences and ideas to share and I would love to listen to them and see if it can help continue along my growth journey. So hit me up on LinkedIn and then if you would go to my website at Mark A. Mears m E A R. S. Markamears dot com and there you'll find a very brief and free purposeful growth self assessment

that you can take. It's about five six seven minutes long, and it will help provide a benchmark of where you are in this whole concept of purposeful growth in your life and in your work. And I'll send you a report customized with your scores along with some tips for myself, and that would really help give me an understanding of who is where in this kind of journey of purposeful growth. I love it.