Gavin Marks is the forward-thinking CEO and Lightbulb Moment Igniter of DM Merchandising. Gavin shares how he became a growth mindset evangelist for his team and customers, and how embracing discomfort can be a leader's most potent tool.
This episode is filled with real world insights, from his evolution in the family business to igniting those light bulb moments with his team, to the unexpected ways in which cold plunges into Lake Michigan in January clear the mind and prepare one for daily challenges.
Gavin Marks is the forward-thinking CEO and Lightbulb Moment Igniter of DM Merchandising. Gavin shares how he became a growth mindset evangelist for his team and customers, and how embracing discomfort can be a leader's most potent tool.
This episode is filled with real world insights, from his evolution in the family business to igniting those light bulb moments with his team, to the unexpected ways in which cold plunges into Lake Michigan in January clear the mind and prepare one for daily challenges.
Welcome to the third growth option podcast, where we talk with business leaders and innovators hungry to drive growth that can be faster than internal organic growth and less risky than acquisition. Your moderator is Bernal Dunke-Schpuller, chief Sherpa and CEO at Realign, who has led private equity owned distributors through turnarounds and growth. With battle proven leaders from all frontiers, we want to provoke thinking about business growth beyond conventional wisdom and binary choices.
Speaker 2:Hey, I'm Benno, your host, and talking today with Gavin Mark, ceo and owner and light bulb moment igniter for DM merchandise. And Gavin, welcome to third growth option podcast.
Speaker 3:Thank you, benno, it's great to be here.
Speaker 2:Gavin, you grew up in your family's business and they put you on what you refer to as a four year hustle and grind rotation before they gave you the keys to the creative department, and then you took on a GM role about 10 years ago and then as CEO role of the merchandising pack in 2017. You talk about growth mindset and how important that is to you as sort of a foundation.
Speaker 2:So I want to talk about you know what growth mindset means and other sort of tactical things and how you business philosophies and other leadership tools Before we even start. How did you come up with light bulb moment igniter, which is on your LinkedIn profile? You're calling yourself that. I love that.
Speaker 3:You know who doesn't like a good light bulb moment. You know, and I think it's when I took over the business, as you mentioned, that I changed my LinkedIn profile and I added that, realizing that my role now is not to seek personal light bulb moments but, even though they're great, but to ignite them in others. So that's one of the answers I'll give you. The other answer is that I thought it sounded pretty cool and I tossed it up there with the intention of taking it down, but it's actually been a great conversation starter. I did not expect so many people to ask me about light bulb moment igniter, so I'm going to keep it up there. There was also been. Oh, it's funny. There's an unforeseen benefit that I did not expect with that use of words, which is it's a great way to quickly identify automated solicitations. So I get emails all the time that say hi, Gavin, I work specifically with CEOs and light bulb moment igniter.
Speaker 2:Bastard Delete.
Speaker 3:And then I know it's a block.
Speaker 2:Right, Right, that's great. And then another thing you told me when we spoke in September it seemed like a good idea in September. We're recording this the day before Thanksgiving in November. It seems like a terrible idea. Now. You jump into the lake Lake Michigan Apparently you did that this morning. How cold was it? Why on earth would you do?
Speaker 3:that. Yep, so I'm still thawing out as we speak here. This is something that I started three seasons ago, so three winters ago and our winter season starting again right now and the way that it started is I was interested in this. I'm always interested in just ways to kind of become better and what can I do to help? Clarity and efficiency and everything else, and I'm kind of an extreme guy in some ways. My cousin, Miles, who runs our creative department, found a Instagram link and he said hey, Gav, I think this is something that you're into Because I know you've talked about this Meanwhile. I've never done it before, and this was three winters ago. This was in probably December. You know, 10 degrees out, ice everywhere and he showed me this community that is that happens to be in the town that I live in. So I went home that night.
Speaker 3:I woke up the next morning at five o'clock and by six o'clock I was at the lake hoping that there would be other people there. It's pitch black out. I see two guys, through my headlights, just standing there on the beach with towels in their hands, and I yelled out the window, is this where we plunge? And they said yeah, I'll show you the way and it's like get out and I'm barefoot in a bathing suit. It's 10 degrees outside, walk across the ice and the snow and these guys that supposedly were going to show me the way were already in the water, nowhere to be found, so it was quite intimidating. I got in. My first plunge was eight seconds.
Speaker 2:Which is seven seconds longer than I would have lasted.
Speaker 3:Got back into my car and it was an intimidating experience. Then the next day I went again. There was a little bit bigger of a crowd. There was a woman that I actually know from our school district and she said hey, Gavin, and talk me through some breathing techniques. That time I was in for two minutes and today I was in for about 10 minutes. The water is 40 right now. It's going to drop to about 33. Right above freezing, Right above freezing. Sometimes we have to break through the ice, Sometimes there's waves. You never know what conditions you're going to get. I'm on over 100 plunges now and it's just a part of my life.
Speaker 2:What does it do for you? Does it crystallizes? It's a shock treatment. I remember I told you growing up in Germany Germans really believe in cold showers. Actually, when I came to the US as a 16 year old, everybody was talking about hot showers. I'm like hot showers. What is this hot shower thing you're talking about? I've since become a hot shower evangelist. What happens in your mind and why are you addicted to jumping into almost freezing water?
Speaker 3:I think two things happen and there's definitely physical results that I see Just in terms of inflammation, and it's kind of like doing a cardio workout the endorphins and the serotonin that you have afterwards you can feel it Just mentally clear. When I get into the office after a day that I've been in the lake, I'm firing on all cylinders most of the time. The other thing that is probably the most important is when you start your day doing the most difficult thing. It never gets easy either. I drive up to the lake, I get the butterflies in my stomach. It's dark out, it's cold out, it's windy. I know that I'm going to be submerging into the dark lake with a bunch of other lunatics, whoever's there. When you start your day like that, everything just seems it's easy after that.
Speaker 3:Everything's achievable, Everything's easy afterwards. So it's been a little bit of and again. Now I sound like an evangelist again and I try not to, but I just believe in it so much.
Speaker 2:Well, you've jumped into a freezing lake a hundred times so you get to be an evangelist about it. So let's talk about growth mindset. So this idea of fixed mindset versus growth mindset fixed mindset is sort of conservative buttoned on the hatches, make sure you don't screw anything up whereas growth mindset is about nurturing. Go West, young man, think bigger tomorrow than yesterday. What turned you into a growth mindset evangelist?
Speaker 3:It probably. I've always been interested, even though it's so, maybe cliche I don't know if that's the right word for it but I followed a lot of self-help quote unquote self-help people, even at a younger age. People laugh when I tell them because Tony Robbins gets a bad rap. But I went to a Tony Robbins four day seminar when I was I had to be 19 or 20 years old Went to the seminar, did the whole thing, walked on fire, but it was a huge eye-opener for me. I mean, there's a lot that obviously is salesmanship on his side, but I actually respect that piece of it as much as I respect the actual content that's coming out. So I think that kicked off my journey. Since then I've been an insatiable reader and learner. I joined an organization about six years ago called YPO. I think you've had a couple of YPO guests on before.
Speaker 2:That's right. A young president's organization I belong to, Vistitch, which is similar to YPO.
Speaker 3:Exactly so. As you know, it's a lot of productive and curious people, lifelong learners, lifelong learners, and so it just continues to fuel that, and I've tried to instill it in the business and in my family.
Speaker 2:What is the most difficult part of staying positive, staying focused, staying forward looking? I mean, we all have bad days, right, we all sort of fall back at times. What's the most difficult thing for you? To stay sharp.
Speaker 3:What I try to bring to the business. So I have a quote on my desk that I put in a little frame that says the mood of the king is the mood of the kingdom. And I look at this all the time to remind myself and this doesn't have to just be a business owner or a business leader or a leader of any sort.
Speaker 1:Everybody has their own kingdom right.
Speaker 3:So I tell my wife all the time the mood of the queen is the mood of the kingdom. So you know, everybody has their own kingdom and it's really the mood that you bring to work every day, or to that. You know, quote unquote kingdom is gonna spread and it's contagious. Unfortunately, I think negative attitude spreads quicker than positive, so you gotta always be on the defense with that. But I think, to answer your question, you know, what makes it difficult is really outside influences. So you know the world is a messy place. Everybody has their, everybody has their problems. They have their, whether it's, you know, finances, whether there's wars across the world going on, there's little micro wars going on within our country. There's just so much stress and kind of heaviness and that bleeds into the business because the business is constructed of people. You know we're not machines, at least yet you know with the rise of AI but we're not machines where people and people have feelings and people have stress and that bleeds into the business. So for me I think one of the most difficult thing is kind of managing all of those emotions and knowing which ones to not be annoyed by or steer my attitude.
Speaker 3:I have another quote on my desk. I'm gonna butcher this, but this is actually from. This was on a note card that my dad wrote in 1974. And I found it. I put it in a little frame. A man is as big as the things that annoy him, and I don't know if he made that up or if he got that somewhere, but I look at that all the time as well. So having the discipline to allow things to not annoy you.
Speaker 2:I mean, you're really talking about being intentional, about not letting certain things annoy us, not letting certain things distract us. I love the quote mood of the king is the mood of the kingdom and in terms of being intentional in our growth mindset, growth outlook, you're very intentional about your own superpowers. There are certain things that we're all very good at. There are certain things we're all not good at and struggle with. And talk to me a little bit about your superpowers and how you are also intentional about letting others use their superpowers hopefully the ones that are not yours.
Speaker 3:I would say that well, superpowers are strong, a strong word Intentionally.
Speaker 2:so yes, sir.
Speaker 3:One of my superpowers, I guess, would be knowing that I don't have all the superpowers, which is important when you're younger.
Speaker 2:You think that we have all of them, right?
Speaker 3:You've got all the answers. You know, and I would say in this phase of my life, you know more than ever I've realized that I don't. I, within the business, I've made sure to and I continue to I mean, this is always a work in progress I continue to bring the right people on the bus, get the wrong people off the bus, make sure that I'm surrounding myself with people that have superpowers, you know, and strengths that I don't have. Something that I've gotten better at, that I think is really important is having the discipline to say no and really avoiding what I call shiny objects, right? So everything's exciting, everything is everything's. You're always being sold. I think there's a line that seller be sold. You know you're always being sold by someone or something and if you try to chase every shiny object, you're going to get lost pretty quickly. So I think that's been one of my in the again, in this phase where I've gotten pretty good at knowing what to say no to and just to really stay focused on on what we do best.
Speaker 2:You told me, no is the most powerful word in the English language and I think it is hard for many of us. Well, it's hard for all of us sometimes, and it's hard for many of us too often to say no because we want you know, you want to please, you want to make, you want to say yes, and it is so important to be very clear about what to say no to. And I, you know, I think you have also been quite intentional about building your team with the strengths that are not your superpowers. You talk about putting people, the right people, on the right seats of the bus. Talk about how putting some people on the right seats of the bus has helped you stay clearer and more focused.
Speaker 3:A notable example. This comes up right now, actually, because I was just talking to another business that was going through a ERP transformation and it's been going on for well over a year now and there's no end in sight and kind of the wheels are falling off. It's a reminder of, so we just went through one as well. We did a big transformation. We moved from kind of an old archaic dinosaur called Makola, which was our system before you know. I think it was probably just a couple steps ahead of MS-DOS type of technology. We moved over to NetSuite, which is, you know, one of the best in breed kind of brands, and I'm proud of how we did it. We did this ERP transformation. We also did a big warehouse management system transformation. I pressed the big red button, as I call it, in December of 2022 to go live on January 1st.
Speaker 3:And, going back to your question, in order to make this happen. This was a three year plan and I knew it needed to be done. There was an expiration date on the system that we had, but we had that system for 20 years, so the amount of data that was in it was unbelievable Every single purchase order, every item, every transaction, every customer. And about two years ago I hired on a COO who's been great. His name's John. He's been great for the business but the other pieces he really understood the technology part of it and I wanted him to be in the business for a couple of years to understand it and take lead on the transformation, knowing that I'm not gonna be the person sitting in the driver's seat, as we, on this project, also brought in a new head of IT, vince, who's also been phenomenal, and he and John really took lead on this.
Speaker 3:We hired outside consultants. We brought in all the outsiders. We did what we had to do in that sense, but since we had inside talent that was steering the operation, it worked really well and I gotta say I'm proud of my entire team. I've had people that've been with me for 30 years and I have people that's been with me for 30 days. Essentially, and it was scary to a lot of people that have been with me for a long time because change is difficult and everybody had to relearn their jobs completely and it was stressful. But at the end of the day and I was reflecting on this yesterday actually, I was talking to one of my sales guys and reflecting on this. So, at the end of the day, even the ones that were resistant to the change came around, understood the importance and worked to make it happen. We pulled the trigger, we pressed the button in January 1st. We spent about three or four months fixing the plane as we were flying it and yeah, now we're on the other side of it.
Speaker 2:But it was scary for the whole team, right, including the person, the COO and the head of IT, who are, of all of you, are probably the ones that were most comfortable with and familiar with what is entailed in an ERP transformation. But it must have been scary for you to hit, as you say, hit the red button and say let's go, we're not ready, we're never gonna be ready until we jump into the cold lake here, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that button could have represented two different things, and in my mind it did at the time. So I'm either pressing a button that is gonna secure our future and give us an opportunity to grow comfortably, with all the technology that we need and help us do that, or I'm pressing the button that it's gonna set off the nuclear bomb and the whole building blows up. I was pretty confident that it was gonna be the the former, the former, but you never know. It's in the back of your mind. So there's definitely some sleepless nights before you actually press it.
Speaker 2:Talk a little bit just about your business philosophies that drive your. I mean, there's the growth mindset, there is the repair of the plane while flying the plane. You talk about embracing discomfort of which I think is huge. You talk about mediocracy, and how do you keep mediocracy out of the business?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think jumping to the mediocrity is. I think that embracing discomfort is how you keep mediocrity out. So I do think comfort is the killer. It leads to complacency and it leads to mediocrity creep. Mediocrity creep is this slow and almost invisible thing that over time, will end up killing you and kill everyone around you. Right Not to be dramatic here, but that's why, when I'm sensing too much comfort, we have to shake things up, and that's in the business and that's personally as well. Making yourself uncomfortable is important. I think a big problem with our country and probably the world and the humanity and the obesity epidemic and depression and a lot of other I'll call them symptoms of being too comfortable are out there. So that's something I try to bring into the organization.
Speaker 3:Another one is around decision-making. So I call this the 3C win, right. So the 3Cs you've got the company, the customer and the consumer. Whenever making a decision, it's important to have a positive outcome for all three for the company, the customer and the consumer. Without this, the wins are temporary and then with this, the wins are reoccurring. So this is one of those things that takes discipline. Sometimes it's easy to make a decision that's gonna be temporarily beneficial for the company raising a price on something to increase margin that's probably the easiest low-hanging fruit of an example, but there's a million others or being contorted too much by the customer and making decisions that actually can hurt the company. And then what I think a lot of vendors perhaps in our kind of world maybe don't look at is the consumer as well. The consumer has to have a win when they're purchasing the products that we're developing. It has to be a win on the consumer level, otherwise again, it's not gonna be reoccurring and it's just a temporary win.
Speaker 3:Timing is something that is kind of a philosophy of mine, which I'm always trying to develop and get better at, but I use the saying that we can do it all. We just can't do it all right now, and that really ties into change. How quick can you change things? How many things can you change? And always changing things not for the sake of change but because it's necessary. But in organization it's almost a living, breathing thing and it needs to be able to digest it. You can't just shove it all down the throats and hope that it digests well, it doesn't work like that, and so that's something that I've been developing over time. It's just having a healthy cadence on change and new things that we bring into the organization.
Speaker 2:I love this quote that's attributed to Bill Gates who knows if he actually said it or somebody else did Talking about timing and cadence and how much change is digestible. He said we all overestimate how much we can get done this week or this year and we all underestimate how much we can get done in the next 10 years, five years or 10 years, and I think that's so powerful to remind ourselves to remember that, even though we're disappoint ourselves by not getting our daily to-do list on every single day or not getting our quarterly list on every single quarter, we stopped thinking big enough five or 10 years out, don't we?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's so right on. I love that quote. That makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2:Gavin, I so appreciate you spending time with me and our listeners and just kind of talking through your leadership tools, growth mindset. I love the quote the mood of the king as the mood of the kingdom. If folks wanted to reach out to you one-on-one, where might they find you?
Speaker 3:I would say the best place is my LinkedIn. You can just look up. Gavin Marks company is DM merchandising. If you're interested in seeing the products that we carry, the brands that we create, go to 247dmcom. But if you want to personally reach out to me, hit me with a DM on LinkedIn. Awesome.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, gavin, this was fun.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks, beno, appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Hey, if folks wanted to explore other growth topics, you can find me on our website, realignforresultscom, or just email Beno B-E-N-N-O at realignforresultscom. Thank you and keep growing.
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