Welcome to invest in yourself, the digital entrepreneur podcast. Join the podcast mogul Phil Better as he interviews successful entrepreneurs that make their living in the digital world. Now let's join your host Phil Better and his special guest today on Invest in Yourself, the the entrepreneur podcast.

Ladies Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Invest in Yourself, the Digital Entrepreneur Podcast. I'm, of course, your host, Phil Better. I am so happy to introduce our guest today. Had a great time chatting with them just before we jumped on here, but they are a number one Better selling author, keynote speaker, consultant, and visionary business leader. Our guest has a significant track record of building stakeholder value, which means driving innovation and profit growth among the class highly profitable brands such as PepsiCo, Pizza Hut, McDonald's, Frito Lay, JCPenney, NBC Universal, and my personal favorite, The Cheesecake Factory. Right? Who doesn't love a good cheesecake? But today, our guest serves as the chief growth officer for Leaf Growth Ventures LLC, a consulting firm inspiring individuals, teams, and organizations to find a purpose in fulfilling their true growth potential while making a positive, a lasting difference in the world which we all want. Our guest has just released the new his new book titled The Purpose Phil Growth Revolution, 4 ways to grow from leader to legacy builder, legacy builder. Please welcome our guest, Mark Mears.

Mark, thank you so much for being

here. Phil, it's my pleasure. I appreciate you having me on today.

I'm excited to get down and learn all about you because you've worked with some amazing brands. You're you're an innovator, if you Phil, from my, from my just reading that. I'm like, I just I know you have so much to offer, Better, I

wanna hear from you. Who are you? What do you do?

Who is Mark Mears?

That's a that's a question that's probably lifelong, and I ask it in my book. I talk about it's not about what do you wanna be when you grow up, it's who do you wanna be when you grow up. And that thesis of who is very, intrinsic to my broader idea of kinda challenging Simon Sinek who says you should start with why. Some people wanna know why you do what you do before they care how you do it or even what you do. And I believe in that to a point, but I believe that we should start with who and specifically who we serve. And so when you ask that question, for me, I start with who I serve. And there's 4 realms of service as I see it. Think of a 4 circle Venn diagram.

They're all intertwined professional realm, your coworkers, There's a professional realm, your coworkers, your clients, your customers, or even your communities. You serve as one of stakeholders. And then your personal realm, your mind, body, spirit, and soul. And I think of it as, you know, we're 4, you know, balanced sometimes cooler than others. We're whole people, and that interaction is so important. Those who may be of spiritual don't say, hey, god. I'll see you on Sunday, but I gotta go to work on Monday. We take our our spiritual, belief systems and values into our workplace and vice versa.

We do that with our relations. We do that with our our health and well-being. If we're not taking care of ourselves, we're no good to the other 3. So I'm just a a a kid from the west side of Wichita, Kansas, where I grew up. Very proud to be a Kansan, because I love the state motto, add Astra for Aspira. And that means through the stars through difficulty. And so, no, I didn't grow up on the mean streets on the south side of Philly or wherever, Better a very suburban, background and, very, you know, Wichita is a fairly big town as they go in Kansas. It's not compared to some of the major cities I've lived in.

I've been, fortunate to have lived in Chicago twice, Dallas twice, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Austin, Texas, and Wichita. So my my kind of Midwest Midwestern, upbringing and value system is kind of a the the the rock that I've built a foundation on as I've kind of gone through schooling and career and life, which has kinda gotten me to where we are today. I love it.