Episode 82 – Mark Maynard

Erik Martinez: Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Digital Velocity Podcast. I'm Eric Martinez, and today we'll be talking with Mark Maynard, an accomplished consultant, coach, and speaker who talks about how identifying your purpose can help.

You propel your business and your team forward. Mark, welcome to the show.

Mark Maynard: Hey Eric. Thanks for having me.

Erik Martinez: Hey man, I am so excited about this conversation. So as many of you have heard, I've talked to several people from my heroic grad speaking course. For those of you're new, I've just completed this program. Mark was in our cohort, and he's an amazing speaker [00:01:00] and has an amazing story to tell. And I thought it would be great because today's conversation's really gonna be.

Kind of about leadership and growing teams and improving performance in your business. So it's gonna come off a little bit of this digital velocity topic, but before we dive into that, Mark, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself?

Mark Maynard: Absolutely. Thank you for listing those things in my bio. The story behind a lot of that is that for 30 years I was an executive with a company called Union Square Hospitality Group in New York City, and we owned and operated 20 - 21 restaurants, bars, jazz club events, company.

In Manhattan and around the Northeast including Shake Shack, which I'm sure is one of those places that many of your listeners will have heard of. That went public in 2015. And one of the things I know we're gonna be talking about is purpose and culture. And it's important for me to talk about how I even ended up at Union Square Hospitality Group.

[00:02:00] Because I was a landscape architect before I ended up in the restaurant industry. And one of the reasons I ended up at Union Square Hospitality Group and stayed there is that it was a really purpose-driven organization. I was just looking for a part-time job 35 years ago, and I fell into a job there and over time decided to stay.

Erik Martinez: That is very cool. So here's kind of this question. I have a different question, but I want to start with this one instead. When you talk about purpose-driven organization, what do you mean by that? What does that mean to Mark?

Mark Maynard: That's a great question. So in the most general sense. Purpose is the reason you exist. Whether it's you as an individual or you as an organization. At a more practical level, since you have business leaders who are your audience, it's where you decide to commit your energy and what you prioritize for the goals that you're looking to achieve.

[00:03:00] It's not as simple as saying we wanna save the world, which one could say that's their purpose or I wanna make a million dollars. Those are potential purposes, I suppose. It's ultimately how you spend your day and where you devote your emotional and practical energy and resources.

So that is, purpose . It sounds like a squishy word, but it can really become a practical word. For example, your purpose might be to improve the lives of others or to make it easier to use the internet.

Some sort of random things. And then it's what you do behind that. Where you devote your energy to get you to that purpose, that really matters.

Erik Martinez: That's really interesting. 'cause I think, that's a really good definition, but I think sometimes it's a little bit hard to conceptualize.

Mark Maynard: Absolutely. It is.

Erik Martinez: Which is what I think most of our businesses talk about purpose, right? You and I were just pre-show talking about, certain business books that we've read, and some of 'em [00:04:00] resonate, some of 'em don't quite resonate enough, right?

When it talks about this idea of purpose and usually expressed in the framework of mission, vision, values.

Mark Maynard: Right. Right.

Erik Martinez: Which I think is what companies are trying to say is this is what we do, why we do it, and who we do it for. And yet oftentimes it feels like they put that on their website, they put it in their literature, but they have a hard time living up to those things. So what in your experience, is the root cause of that particular issue?

Mark Maynard: That's a great question. And I think there's another word that I think is worth defining before I answer that.

Erik Martinez: Okay.

Mark Maynard: Another word that gets thrown around a lot is culture.

Erik Martinez: Yes.

Mark Maynard: And like mission, vision, values, even purpose. People mis associate culture as something that is inactive. It's a philosophy or something like that. And I define culture as it's [00:05:00] our beliefs and values in action.

And ultimately it's how every action makes people feel that defines the culture. So for example you may say we really believe in honesty. That's one of our core values or something like that.

But during the interview process, you aren't transparent and forthcoming about what the job is with a potential candidate. Or when someone is up for a review, you don't really give them all of the feedback that would help them thrive. So that would be an example where the culture, the everyday lived experience is not aligned with the beliefs or values.

Right? So the actions, it's when you walk that talk that the culture is really formed. And so that I think is one of those words that purpose and culture work hand in hand because it's not enough to say, we're gonna devote our energy towards this goal, but then not actually do the thing.

Erik Martinez: It's really [00:06:00] interesting that you say that because it brings me back for years. I coached fast pitch, and I tell you what, I am not, the top tier fast pitch coach. I will say that, but I've always held this philosophy that. One of the things that I see happen to our youth today, and I see this in the workplace too, when it comes to talent of any age, is that when you come into a tryout or an interview, there's an assumed set of skills and an assumed set of knowledge and depending on somebody's point of view on that set of knowledge and assumed set of skills, sometimes colors how you view the individual. So Mark, you are a 15-year-old kid who has never played competitive baseball or fast pitch ever before. And you try out for a team and yeah you clearly look like you have never done this before.

Mark Maynard: Right.

Erik Martinez: So I see this [00:07:00] situation one of the values I had on our team was that - hey, we can develop anybody's potential. We can help them move in that direction. But I've lost a lot of players over the years because they were, quote, being held back. Because there were players on the team who weren't as skilled or as fast or as accomplished as this particular person felt they were or were not.

Mark Maynard: Right?

Erik Martinez: And what I would go back to them was with was, " Hey. This is true. There is a disparity in these skill sets, but are you being the best player you can be if you are not pursuing the next level. Instead you're worrying about somebody over here who is working on trying to get to where you are."

Mark Maynard: Yeah.

Erik Martinez: So I guess, what causes that? Why? Why do we walk in with those lenses and those viewpoints without really taking the time and understanding the opportunity or the potential [00:08:00] that anybody could fit in any role?

Mark Maynard: A couple of reasons. First of all, I think we have selective amnesia. Because we forget when we sucked at something. And I was that kid, I was always the skinny kid, the smallest kid or whatever. But I always got the School Spirit awards, cause I was always the kid who tried harder than anyone else.

I was never gonna be. A good third baseman. 'cause I was afraid of the big kids, running into me. Right. But I was always the one to show up early, and stay late and do the extra work. So if I had forgotten how bad I was I would probably be less humble, and I think a lot of us forget what we were like at whatever the age we were when we weren't good at something. When we were new at our jobs. And we do that, I think, because it's a coping mechanism, because we don't wanna relive that stuff. And it's interesting having grown up in the restaurant industry, it's, you can watch The Bear, you can watch any other show - a lot of that stuff is really accurate. And the challenge [00:09:00] is that the generation that I am, which is Gen X, we sort of paid that suffering forward. And there's a lot of people my age who believe that Gen Z are a bunch of whiners.

And meanwhile, I'm really impressed with Gen Z because they're finally standing up. They're in their twenties and they're saying, " This actually isn't cool." And so I think there's a disconnect where people believe they had a certain experience and they feel like it's soft to not sort of haze people the way they were hazed back in the nineties or whatever. So I think that's a natural thing. And you see that with sports teams, in restaurant, in military. I mean, you see that in a lot of different places. Especially, things that are a little more macho, like the things I just mentioned.

Erik Martinez: So how does purpose fix that problem? How does that address that particular issue?

Mark Maynard: Yeah, so I think that's actually a really interesting thing because I work with different organizations. Mostly with founders and most of those founders are in their forties and fifties. [00:10:00] But I also work with some founders who are in their early thirties, and it's fascinating to see the way they treat their employees just generationally.

Where purpose comes in is by having the guts to say what's important to you. You actually filter in people who want to work with you, and you filter out people that you have no chance of aligning to your values. And I love that.

For example, I use the example of Patagonia because they're such a famous company. Their purpose is to save our home planet. So if you think that's a loser kind of purpose, don't go sell t-shirts at that place. Go sell them at H and M or something. That's totally fine. But if you believe, hey, if I'm gonna sell t-shirts or sweep a floor, or work as a security guard, and I really believe in saving our home planet. I'd rather be that security guard at a place where I'm gonna save the home planet, rather at a place where that's not our goal. That's not our purpose.

And so I believe and I've seen it in [00:11:00] action, that when you state your purpose and you spend the time to do that work. You actually attract a tribe that you don't need to convert. Like I was converted. Because you just say, "Hey, this is what's important to us. This is how we're gonna devote our energy. This is what we're gonna be talking about every day. This is our culture." The way we train, or the way we discipline, or the way we pay, is all towards that purpose. If you learn that in the interview process. You can say, sign me up, or, whoa, no, that's not for me. And that saves everyone so much time. That saves HR time, that saves the trainers time. And that of course ultimately saves the employee time. And it gets those people up to speed more quickly so they can take care of our customers and make us more money.

It's not a diabolical master plan. It's this beautiful thing where we all work together towards these goals and then it helps. Employees, the customers, and the investors. Like it's a beautiful thing.

Erik Martinez: It is a beautiful thing. So let's flip the coin for a second and let's talk about the lack of purpose.

Mark Maynard: Oh yeah

Erik Martinez: [00:12:00] What's the impact of the lack of purpose on individuals, teams, and organizations and what are some of the manifestations.

Mark Maynard: Yeah. The word anxiety, not the psychological term, but like the lowercase anxiety is defined as, fear of the unknown, and when you don't know what the purpose of your work is, how you fit in, why your work matters what your working towards organizationally or personally. How your individual purpose is aligned or not aligned with the purpose of the organization.

You feel anxious. Because you don't know if you're wasting your time. You don't know if the work that you're doing is gonna be valued by your supervisor. This is a very basic thing, like, does my supervisor care that I'm doing this particular thing or not, or does my, boss's boss care. Like, I think I'm working really hard, but do they care? By having a potential disconnect, where those things are misaligned or where it's not communicated, and you're just supposed to somehow sort of have ESP to understand what [00:13:00] the purpose of your organization is and how you fit into it.

You're more anxious, you are unsure of your future, so you're more likely to keep an eye out on other opportunities just in case, which increases frustration, it increases employee turnover. And I believe as someone who is in the, direct customer service industry for 35 years. I believe our customers can feel that.

When you walk into a place where everyone is just aligned and everything is clicking regardless of what your purpose is. It's like, wow, these people are all marching in the same direction and you feel it. And it's this strong feeling viscerally as a customer. And I believe that grows your tribe of customers, not just your tribe of employees.

Erik Martinez: You gave this really good example. I was going through your LinkedIn posts and you were talking about the jazz bar, Blue Smoke, and you were talking about when you guys opened was that a lot of great press. People were [00:14:00] coming. You guys were busy, but I think the words you said were the experience left something to be desired. I'm paraphrasing,

Mark Maynard: Yeah. I mean, what I would've said not in public was much, much more curse word.

Erik Martinez: But you also said we did something to engender loyalty in that moment when we weren't our best. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Mark Maynard: 100%. So I'm not a marketing expert like you and most of your listeners. But one thing I do know about is relationships and what we call four walls, marketing. It doesn't matter how many people we drive to our place if our product sucks, right?

So at the end of the day, as an operator, my job was to make sure that product, whatever that product was the best. For us, that product was way more than food. It was a feeling.

Was each person getting the right food at the right time? Was the cocktail the same way it was last time? Does the server know what, each menu item is, like a really basic frontline [00:15:00] things.

One of the biggest antidotes to our problems were, I started a program or a sort of a campaign called - start with yes. Which was, we became really defensive because we were just getting beaten up by the press about how terrible we were. Luckily, social media didn't exist. This was 2002, 'cause who knows if we would've survived that. And we were all getting defensive, like someone would complain about something really minor, but we had heard that complaint 20 times before, and so we might be like, I know it's really bad, and I basically sat everyone down and said let's just change our mindset here for a minute. Let's start by saying yes. Like. Yes, I can help you with that. Yes, I I wanna make that better for you, as opposed to, no, we can't do that. No, we can't handle that special request. And we focused on just changing our mindset to a more positive stance.

And what was interesting is our customers, our guests reacted to that. Because they saw [00:16:00] that we almost were confident even when we were falling short. We were confident in saying, yes, you know what? It's not quite there yet, but we are so proud of this. We know what's gonna be great, so give us a shot, give us another shot.

That was kind of how we did it with our guests. What we did behind the scenes is we said, there is nothing more important than hot food. We started with the most basic stuff, and I think we could all do that. If you are UPS or whatever, like what's the most important thing start really baseline, that the packages aren't crushed.

Erik Martinez: Right

Mark Maynard: Like before you get to, let's start delivering stuff early, let's start with what's the worst thing for a delivery company? When your package is broken. So let's start there. And we started with really basic stuff like that. Blocking and tackling, that's what we started with because we were so overwhelmed with the volume.

I mean, this is a high class problem. We had thousands of people who wanted to go there. The problem was we were just disappointing half of them.

Erik Martinez: You weren't your best [00:17:00] selves at that

Mark Maynard: We were not our best selves and if we're serving 500 people a day and pissing off 250 of them, I'd rather serve 400 people a day and have a better chance in getting it right. So we had to kind of trimmed our sales a little bit and made it.

Erik Martinez: And so at Blue Smoke, if I were to, I interpolate the purpose. The purpose was to have a quality experience at all aspects of delivering food to customers coming in

Mark Maynard: Yeah. I mean, I think it was even a little bit more squishy than that. It was to bring people joy through barbecue and jazz.

Erik Martinez: okay.

Mark Maynard: So how could we do that? When you say what people want here is joy. It opens up other things beyond the technical where we say, "You know what- we're out of our pulled pork today, but what's another way I can bring you joy."

And it kind of opens us up to possibilities that maybe we didn't imagine if we only were thinking about the technical delivery of a product. And [00:18:00] Hilton, I should know it, but their purpose is something like to shine the light of hospitality around the world.

So when you think about a company like Hilton that has fancy hotels and not fancy hotels, and they have timeshares and they have restaurants, and bars. It's a way to say, we have many different ways that feeling can manifest itself.

Erik Martinez: Yeah, it's interesting that you say that because a few episodes ago I had a guest on, her name is Jeanette McMurtry and Jeanette's whole position on marketing is more about the neuroscience and the emotion behind decision making than the technical aspect of marketing to them in quote, driving sales.

So, I'll give you a good example. Where I live, there's two primary convenience stores, one's QuickTrip and the other one is Casey's. Both are pretty prevalent in this part of the country. And if you were to ask me where I would go for convenience [00:19:00] store when I need gas, or a soda, or whatever it is - 99% of the time, I will drive an extra mile or two, or even five, to go to QuickTrip versus Casey's. Why? Because every time I walk into QuickTrip it's not universally true - I have been in some crappy ones but as a general rule, when I pull up to the pump, they work. When I walk into the store, it's well-organized and it's stocked.

By contrast, when I walk into Casey's - and I'm sure I'm gonna get a call after this episode, it is frequent where I can pull up to a pump and it has the out of order sign I can walk into the store and it's disorganized and messy and not completely stocked. Now there's some things that Casey's does better in QuikTrip, and that's true of any business.

There are things that you do even when you're not your best self, that you still do better than everybody else. Right. And what I'm hearing you say is that feeling - in Hilton's case, [00:20:00] it's a feeling of, hey, when I go to the Hilton Garden Inn, which I do a lot when I travel, this is the experience you're gonna get when you go to Hampton and this is the experience you're gonna get.

And you can go into our hotels almost worldwide. Again, not a hundred percent true, but as a general rule, you're gonna get the same experience. You know what to expect, and people will trump that over perfection every single time.

Mark Maynard: I totally agree, and I think that is where, to me, stating your purpose should be something that people do more of but it requires a little bit of bravery. And why I say that is there's two things that you hear in the business community a lot, brand promise and employee value proposition.

To me, those two things should be linked by the purpose of the organization. So, Chick-fil-A, I think their purpose is something like to glorify God or something like that, right? So if I'm gonna fry chicken and I believe in that purpose. I'm gonna do a better [00:21:00] job as an employee compared to Popeye's because I am predisposed to believe in that purpose, and I'm gonna make sure that fried chicken is better than if I worked at Popeye's.

I don't know if that's true, but similarly think about the brand promise. If I believe a certain way, do I believe that all other things being equal, the fried chicken sandwich at Chick-fil-A tastes better or worse because of their purpose compared to the fried chicken sandwich at Popeye's.

By the way I don't know if we, you are, that's a big thing. Like this is a big debate, Popeye's versus Chick-fil-A.

Erik Martinez: It used to be KFC versus Chick-fil-A.

Mark Maynard: Yeah. So why not state it - go out on a limb, and I don't even see it as going out on a limb. I see it as putting it out there. Like, you and your listeners create marketing campaigns. Why on earth would you create a marketing campaign unless you know what your end goal is.

So now let's go up three levels. Why would you create a business unless you really have given a lot of [00:22:00] thought to what you want to do with that business.

Erik Martinez: You know it's funny when you phrase it that way, it's like, oh, duh. But I think the reality is, I mean, gosh, I know I sometimes struggle with my purpose and understanding. What I'm here to do, and maybe that might be just a function of the stage of life I'm in, but I think, when you get into the heat of battle, the vast majority of people are still - what am I trying to do?

I'm trying to put food on the table. That's my purpose.

Mark Maynard: Right.

Erik Martinez: And what you're really saying from a marketing standpoint, the marketing implication is, Hey, we are here to help drive sales for our organization, but more importantly, we are here to raise awareness of our brand as a business that people want to come to.

And that's a multifaceted thing that's above and beyond. All the things that marketing can control. Right? What can marketing control?

I was just having this conversation earlier today [00:23:00] about what is marketing's purpose? And they're like, oh yeah. Marketing's role is to, generate sales or leads. It's to raise brand awareness. It's to promote the brand in all the various ways that you can promote brands these days. But what's the message? That's kind of what you're saying is it's more important to have a really strong message around what you were trying to do in a world versus sale, sale all the time.

Mark Maynard: Right, because what you just sort of highlighted is what you were trying to do in the world. To me that's really important. It's funny 'cause I just wrote down three things, I've never taken a marketing course in my life, but I have run businesses for 30 years. So what I would say about marketing, as someone who's worked with CMOs is that the role of marketing is to use storytelling to grow the tribe and build community.

Erik Martinez: Oh, I like that.

Mark Maynard: Which is more gratifying and more fulfilling than saying, [00:24:00] wow, our KPIs are this, or our year over year, thing is this .Or this data point is up by 1.3% year over year, because that is like a sugar high. Where you can look at a spreadsheet and by the way, I'm someone who 25% of my compensation was built on financial performance. So, it was always an important part of my variable comp.

I get the data stuff. But what I was proudest of when I ran successful businesses and I'm very fortunate to say that I did, is when my three primary KPIs were all moving in the same direction. And that was guest sentiment, guests coverage counts or check average were up along with reviews, employee turnover was down and profitability was up. And also we didn't just use profitability at our company. I think too many places used only profitability. It should be sales growth as well. Looking long term, not month to month. And so when I would have five or six or eight [00:25:00] quarters of positive trends, I knew I was doing everything I could.

Erik Martinez: It's interesting because you said earlier. I'm not a marketer. I didn't go to school for marketing. I didn't study marketing. But yet everything about working in a brand is a marketing job at the end of the day, right?

In the broader context, it's the brand story that you want customers to be able to relate to and tell stories about.

So the company that is always on back order. Is that because they don't know how to order? Or are they always on back order because they're just generating such customer loyalty that you just can't get enough? I mean, either one of those scenarios can be true in a brand. For one customer, that could be a very frustrating experience. And for another customer it could create value.

Back to something you said earlier about create your tribe. And, if you're to look out in the world of marketing I would say a Taylor [00:26:00] Swift. I like her music. I'm not like a, Swifty or anything like that, but she has built a brand and a tribe behind her because of the way she runs her operation and her organization performs.

Mark Maynard: Yep. And I think that's she's a really interesting example because she's a purpose-driven leader. People love her music. She also puts on a great show. She also has this other thing where whenever she's in a city. She meets with the leaders, or she has her people meet with the leaders and she will improve something in that city. So she will donate to a park or to a food bank. It's like this little secret thing that she does to improve the community where she's doing these concerts.

Erik Martinez: That's fascinating.

Mark Maynard: I think I learned about that in Fast Company or something like that. It was a business thing that I learned about it, not from her marketing, and she doesn't make a big deal about it, but it's important to her, as a business owner. One of the world's biggest business owners, you could argue.

Going [00:27:00] back to your customers feel it, and when I was running restaurants, there were 10,000 restaurants in Manhattan, so it's within a very small space, 10,000 restaurants. And our restaurants were always rated, right in the top 10, top 20.

And one of the things that I found so remarkable especially before I was, a leader, was these people , these customers love this place. What is it about it? And that was one of the things that really hooked me. It's like, "Oh my God, I've never seen so many old people love a place" - I was 25 and they were, 40. And as I grew up, and I eventually became general manager of that place and then managing partner of a bunch of other places, I realized that our product was community. Our product wasn't fettuccine alfredo. Our product was how those people felt when they ate that salad, because there were plenty of other places that had a good salad.

Erik Martinez: Right.

Mark Maynard: And we would've called that hospitality, but to me it was like bigger than that. It was just like we are part of this [00:28:00] tribe.

Erik Martinez: Yeah. And I think, in today's market, there's a lot being written about organizations taking a stand for something and there's some cynicism around that, which I totally understand and is often deserved. But in this market where almost every product has a direct competitor.

And those direct competitors are more and more, and in the space that we work in, it's usually in the form of somebody selling something on Amazon or lots of somebody selling lots of things on Amazon.

How do you differentiate yourself and what you're really talking about is this is how you can go out to and be present in the world and be different and connect to the customer. And that seems to be a recurring theme in a lot of my recent discussions - how do you really create that connection?

If you were to give any piece of advice on this topic to the listening audience, what would it [00:29:00] be?

Mark Maynard: I would say take a moment, a weekend, a week some time to reflect on what you want. And what you want your impact to be on the world. So start there. I'm purposefully not using the word purpose.

Just think about what you want. It could be money, it could be more time with your family. It could be to save the world. It could be to educate the masses. It could be anything. and then consider how that goal, mission, vision, purpose, whatever you wanna call it, is aligned with what you're currently doing.

And then looking for a way to narrow the gap between your dreams, your aspirations and your ability to achieve them and starting there will set you on a course where, you won't be able to unhear that in your head. It might take you three years or six years, or you might already be very close and you just need that motivation to push yourself a little harder because you think you're not, quite making the impact you can [00:30:00] make.

But once you have that in your head, you can then create a plan to move you closer to whatever that aspiration is. And I can tell you it works. I did that after leaving a job of 30 years, I took six months, and that's how I ended up on your podcast. Because part of my thing was I said, I want to create a new purpose for myself, and my purpose is to empower people to exceed their potential. And I made that a provocative purpose for myself, because I believe that most of us don't appreciate our potential. And we hold ourselves back by obstacles that are in our heads.

So I would do this process with you, but you don't need a coach to do it necessarily and say, what's holding you back? And, honestly, like 90% of the time it's, I'm holding myself back. And that's why I say exceed, because it's exceed the potential that you've thought about the story you've told yourself for the past five years, 10 years, 20 years since you were a kid.

And I do that with [00:31:00] businesses. I do that with people. I do that with myself, and it's really inspiring when you look in the mirror and say, I had no idea I could do that thing, and it took me two years, but I did it. And it's like the best positive feedback loop you could ever want to feel like a champion.

Erik Martinez: Mark, thank you so much for the great words of wisdom and the conversation about purpose. I think this is something that in the marketing world is getting talked about a lot, but I think our teams have to figure out better ways of communicating it and making sure that it's meaningful.

And that's what you're talking about. It's getting really down to that human connection and what it means to an individual to interact with your brand. If somebody wants to reach out and connect with you, what's the best way?

Mark Maynard: Absolutely. I post a few times a week on LinkedIn. It's Mark Maynard. ACC. ACC is my credential as a coach or Maynard consulting.net.

Erik Martinez: Awesome. Mark, thank you so much [00:32:00] for sharing your insights with us today. I really appreciate your time. Folks that's it for today's episode of the Digital Velocity Podcast. Thank you for listening and have a fantastic day.