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Mark HiddlesonMark Hiddleson is the Owner of Specialized Storage Solutions, Inc., a nationwide logistics company with industry-leading warehouse storage solutions. It provides clients with innovative products, facility layouts, and designs to optimize their logistics operations. With several decades of service experience in the warehousing and logistics industry, Mark has held leadership roles in several professional industry organizations. Using a holistic approach, he also has experience in equipment material handling, operations management, supply chain optimization, professional development, and public speaking.

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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • [3:15] Mark Hiddleson’s childhood entrepreneurship lessons, starting with selling gourds
  • [6:45] Specialized Storage Solutions’ journey into niche seismic design
  • [9:36] How unsatisfied client communication sparked a thriving business
  • [14:59] What fuels Mark’s passion for self-improvement?
  • [17:28] The 90-day coaching challenge that revolutionized Mark’s health and business
  • [22:20] How podcasting bridged the gap to Mark’s book publication
  • [25:03] Connecting industry leaders through networking events like executive breakfasts
  • [31:50] What is the role of economics in spiritual and personal development?

In this episode…

What if you could integrate the best scientific and holistic practices to enhance your personal growth, elevate your business, and make a significant contribution to your community? Learn how a thriving entrepreneur and author leverages modern strategies for self-improvement while fostering a positive impact.

Mark Hiddleson shares his journey of transforming his personal and professional life by embracing holistic practices. He discusses how his early exposure to visualization and self-improvement techniques laid the foundation for his success in the storage solutions niche. Mark’s path led him to establish Specialized Storage Solutions and host the Tao of Pizza podcast, which focuses on integrating personal growth with business strategies. His story exemplifies the power of visualization and self-awareness in overcoming challenges, such as leaving a lucrative corporate job to start his own business, and how those practices have helped him navigate the complexities of entrepreneurship.

In this episode of the Top Business Leaders Show, John Corcoran chats with Mark Hiddleson, Owner of Specialized Storage Solutions, about blending spiritual growth with business acumen, building relationships, and creating a thriving ecosystem within their enterprises. Mark emphasizes holistic development, showcasing how personal growth can transform one’s approach to business and life. He shares lessons on embracing challenges, leveraging strengths, and fostering connections that lead to long-term success.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Quotable Moments:

  • “I always joke that I started working when I was young, but I didn’t start paying taxes until I was 12 years old.”
  • “You don’t have to sit on a pillow for 30 minutes a day to talk about meditation.”
  • “Grow a pair of balls, take a second on your house, and start your own company.”
  • “Networking is not working. It’s something you do, and it pays off.”
  • “If I’m going to make a commitment to somebody else and we agree there’s value here, I’m going to commit 100%.”

Action Steps:

  1. Embrace visualization and meditation practices: Incorporating visualization techniques helps overcome mental hurdles by creating a clear picture of desired outcomes, which is crucial for achieving long-term goals in business and self-improvement.
  2. Commit to continuous learning and outside coaching: By engaging with professional coaches or mentors, individuals can gain new perspectives, accountability, and guidance, aiding them in navigating challenges and enhancing their skills effectively.
  3. Cultivate strong professional relationships: Hosting networking events like executive breakfasts can facilitate meaningful connections and collaborations, enriching both personal and business growth.
  4. Participate actively in industry and community organizations: Engaging in industry-specific organizations not only offers learning opportunities but also allows individuals to serve their communities, leading to personal satisfaction and professional development.
  5. Adopt a holistic approach to business and personal life: This approach ensures that all aspects of life, including health, relationships, and business, are interconnected and balanced, fostering long-term prosperity.

Sponsor for this episode…

At Rise25, we’re committed to helping you connect with your Dream 100 referral partners, clients, and strategic partners through our done-for-you podcast solution.

We’re a professional podcast production agency that makes creating a podcast effortless. Since 2009, our proven system has helped thousands of B2B businesses build strong relationships with referral partners, clients, and audiences without doing the hard work.

What do you need to start a podcast?

When you use our proven system, all you need is an idea and a voice. We handle the strategy, production, and distribution – you just need to show up and talk.

The Rise25 podcasting solution is designed to help you build a profitable podcast. This requires a specific strategy, and we’ve got that down pat. We focus on making sure you have a direct path to ROI, which is the most important component. Plus, our podcast production company takes any heavy lifting of production and distribution off your plate.

We make distribution easy.

We’ll distribute each episode across more than 11 unique channels, including iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. We’ll also create copy for each episode and promote your show across social media.

Co-founders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as being the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90xAtariEinstein BagelsMattelRx BarsYPO, EO, Lending Tree, Freshdesk, and many more.

The relationships you form through podcasting run deep. Jeremy and John became business partners through podcasting. They have even gone on family vacations and attended weddings of guests who have been on the podcast.

Podcast production has a lot of moving parts and is a big commitment on our end; we only want to work with people who are committed to their business and to cultivating amazing relationships.

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Contact us now at support@rise25.com or book a call at rise25.com/bookcall.

Rise25 Co-founders, Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran, have been podcasting and advising about podcasting since 2008.

Episode Transcript

John Corcoran: 00:00

All right. Today we’re talking about how to embrace the best of today’s scientific, holistic practices to inspire self-improvement in yourself and to grow your business in life and also make a contribution back to your community. And my guest today is Mark Hiddleson. He’s got a new book out that’s on this very topic. And so I’ll tell you more about him in a second.

Just stay tuned.

Intro: 00:24

Welcome to the Top Business Leaders Show powered by Rise25 Media. We feature top founders, executives and business leaders from all over the world.

John Corcoran: 00:40

All right. Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran here. I’m the host of the show. And you know, each week I get to talk to smart CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs from all kinds of different companies.

If you check out the archives, we’ve got Netflix and Grubhub, Redfin, gusto, Kinkos, lots of great episodes. Check those out. And of course, this episode brought to you by rise 25, where we help B2B businesses to get clients referrals and strategic partnerships with Done-for-you podcast and content marketing. And Mark, I know for you that you would agree with me when I say that relationships are really. So mean so much in business. 

 And you know, for me, as for you, we’ll get into this conversation. You know, having the ability to have a tool, which is a podcast to take people like yourself, highlight them, focus on them, shine a spotlight on something interesting that they’re doing in their career, and then broadcasted it to the world has meant so much for me, and so many great relationships have come from that. So such a pleasure to have you here today. And if anyone wants to learn more about what we do, you can go to rise 25.com or email support at rise 25.com. All right. 

Before we get started, first of all, shout out Srini Rao, who’s the host of the Unmistakable Creative Podcast. And guess what. Even before that, which is what he’s most known for now, blogcast FM when I was listening to a listening to a podcast back in 2006, 2007, 2008, time frame, he had this podcast. That was it was like the the audio version of a blog. That’s the only way you could describe it. 

 And he interviewed interesting people and it inspired me to go into doing a podcast. And then one day actually was my friend Matt Monroe, who also knew Srini, who recommended me to Srini, and it was like a dream come true, you know, having known of him, admired him, respected him to be a guest on his show. But now you and I connected through that because then you heard that episode and reached out to me, and now we’ve done so much together. So such great things come from all of that. But, Mark, you’re the owner of Specialized Storage Solutions is a company that you started in 2004. 

 You’ve worked in the heart of Napa Valley, beautiful wine country, helping wine industry companies and other types of companies with their storage racking and warehouse solutions. You also have a master’s degree in holistic Health Education, and you are the host of the Dao of Pizza podcast and a new book by the same name, which is what we’re going to be focusing on here today. So I’m excited about that. But Mark, first let’s start with what were you like as a kid? Were you like a hustler running around and doing lemonade stands and paper routes and selling gum at school and getting busted by your teacher? 

 What was the young Mark Hiddleston like?

Mark Hiddleson: 03:15

I love that question. It’s it’s going to be hard for me to keep a straight face. But first of all, thank you for having me. Thank you for sharing the story. How we met.

We did meet through a podcast and it has been an amazing journey and before I say anything about myself had him on my podcast. At the time he had done about a thousand interviews and I was on probably 10 or 15 interviews, and I was like, well, I could get to a thousand interviews and it’s like, okay, I’m doing 50 a year. So that’s only, oh, it’s 20 years, like a thousand podcasts is.

Pretty impressive. But I think he was doing it every day for a while. He said, Yeah, check out that episode. But as a kid, man, when you talk about entrepreneurial. So my mom, first of all, my mom was a was a elementary school teacher, my hero in my life, great teacher.

She always kept me busy with something because I was that kid that was kind of always asking the question, why? Why do we have to do it this way? Why? And but she wouldn’t let me have a paper route because she didn’t think it was safe. Like she didn’t want me out riding around on my bicycle at 5:00 in the morning, and, you know.

John Corcoran: 04:22

She was ahead of her time then.

Mark Hiddleson: 04:25

Yeah. So this was in the in the 70s in a rural town called Manteca. But my, my sister. So we did other things. My sister and I were like, funny, I can remember my sister seven years younger than me, and I was probably nine years old at the time.

And we had this garden where we had these little gourds that were beautiful colors and everything. And so we had this wagon and I was like, well, I don’t have a paper route. We need some money, man. Like, I’m nine and she’s 2 or 3, and we went door to door with a wagon full of gourds.

And wow.

It was amazing. You know, people would just give you money. It was kind of like a lemonade stand, I guess.

John Corcoran: 05:02

Yeah, sure.

Mark Hiddleson: 05:03

People just give you money just because, like, oh my God, kids. Sister. It’s like a a way to make a sale. And I always joke that I started working when I was really young, but I didn’t start paying taxes until I was 12 years old. And so one of my favorite stories is, you know, again, couldn’t get a paper out, but there was a bakery in the town I grew up in that had a dishwashing shift from like six in the morning till eight and school started like 815.

So I was 12. I got a work permit, did everything official, and I think I was making like $2.65 an hour, you know, working two hours a day. And I get my check and it had taxes taken out. So now, you know, I’m ten years away from being 65. So they start sending you your reports from Social Security and like there’s these entries like in 1982, like $17 in taxes. 

 And I’m just always, you know, I’ve sold walnuts, cracked walnuts on the ground and gone door to door. So. Yeah.

John Corcoran: 06:05

So you found. You found a way, even though your mom wouldn’t allow you. Wasn’t safe in rural Manteca to go door to door with the with the paper route. So that’s fascinating. Thanks for your background there. And you, you started socialized storage solution about 20 years ago.

What what inspired that? Were you doing something similar and decided to going on your own? Because what you do is very specialized, by the way. You know, you build these massive like if you’ve ever been to a Costco or something like that, these massive racks that you know, frankly, like if they fail, like people could be killed. So there’s a lot of consequences. 

 But you build these massive racks inside of warehouses.

Mark Hiddleson: 06:45

Yeah. And in California it’s even more because of earthquakes. And so we’re really involved in seismic design and even a lot of existing systems. Sometimes a client who goes into a warehouse and there’s an existing rack system there, they’ll bring us in to do a retroactively and say, is this system going to handle what they’re putting on in the project? We just completed the racks.

So Home Depot racks are probably 16ft tall and the product is about 20. Same thing with Costco. We just finished a project where the rack is 42ft tall, and there’s a six foot pallet on top of that, and there’s 7 or 8 pallets deep in a zero degree freezer.

John Corcoran: 07:24

Wow. It is.

Mark Hiddleson: 07:26

It is kind of a niche business. So now I forgot the question.

John Corcoran: 07:31

So so I mean that that’s so, so specialized.

How did you get into it?

Mark Hiddleson: 07:36

My company. Yeah. So it’s a great question. I was right out of college. I found this industry material handling and I just loved it loved it because it was a connection between design, engineering, construction, and then there’s a little bit of a sales part to it, because you’ve got to communicate between engineers, manufacturers and project manage and manage teams really well to to be successful in it.

So eight years of working for a really good company with a really good boss, a lot of people, you know, a lot of times people would ask me if I was the owner of the company just because we all kind of operated in a way that we wanted to, you know, own results, own solutions, the way we dress, the way we manage our projects. And there was a niche that was developing in used equipment that our company I was working for. They didn’t really want to pursue it. I came to them with an idea like, hey, we should start a division that’s just strictly used and focus on the things that we’re not doing, like mezzanines, pushback, racking some of these system type things, and they didn’t want to do it. So it was it was a kind of instead of complain about not being able to do what you want to do, go out and create it. 

 And I had a lot of people at the time. I mean, the main thing, you know, there were several people that would call me because we had to have these corporate meetings on Tuesdays. And so they knew it’d be tough to get Ahold of me, because I’d be in a meeting from 7:00 to 9:00 in the morning and a meeting from 12 to 1, and he’d say, man, you gotta write me a check for $800 right now. I’m like, Gilbert, what? What are you talking about? 

 Because that’s how much money you’re wasting going to these meetings every Tuesday. It’s like, I can’t get a hold of you if you own your own business, you know, that’s that’s another 800.

John Corcoran: 09:23

So you had clients that wanted more access to you, but because of this corporate system you’re in, they were like constraints that prevented you from having the same level of access that you wanted with the clients.

Mark Hiddleson: 09:34

And even projects, projects that we knew we were capable of doing. Yeah, we had the resources, the skill sets, the crews. And, you know, we still did some of those of those projects, but we didn’t. We didn’t really excel at it or we didn’t.

John Corcoran: 09:47

Yeah, the right resources. So you saw an opportunity.

And by the way, it’s so funny, like, you know, the way you described that this industry was so perfectly aligned for you. Working with engineers has an element of architecture and engineering, but you’re not totally responsible for that. You work with others, need to communicate, has an element of sales. And, you know, it’s funny because you’re fortunate that you found this industry because it’s an unusual industry, right? You know, not everyone.

It’s not often you meet someone who’s in this industry, right? But seems to match your personality perfectly. Right. Matches what you’re interested in.

Mark Hiddleson: 10:22

Yeah it does. And the clients that I like to work with, a lot of our guys, they’re they’re running facilities. It’s also even our clients. It’s a similar a similar story because all the salespeople in, you know, third party warehouse is probably one of our biggest clients, which is that’s a public warehouse. There’s somebody who doesn’t they’re not warehousing their own product, but they specialize.

Warehousing is their core competency, so they might have 200 clients having anywhere from 1000 to 20,000 pallets of products in their warehouse. And in order to be a good salesperson in that business, you have to be a really good operator. You have to know your numbers because what you’re selling is really I mean, selling logistics or warehousing, it’s you have to know what your numbers are. You know, if you’re going to service your customer well and make good agreements. And so I really like I love the, you know, my clients kind of share a lot of the same values that I do, that partnerships are important. 

 Good communication is important so that when we do a project, you know, we’re going to ask all the right questions. And even sometimes it’s uncomfortable. Or sometimes you have to ask a question ten times and they’re like, dude, you’ve asked me this ten times. I’m like, yeah, because it’s a really big deal.

John Corcoran: 11:28

Yeah. I mean, you can’t just like, tear these things down overnight.

Mark Hiddleson: 11:33

Yeah. And it seems like something really simple, but it’s people will say like, it’s not rocket science, but I always laugh because it’s like sometimes it seems like rocket science would be easier, you know, because the simplest things and anyone who’s in this industry will know. You know, it’s when you’re.

John Corcoran: 11:51

Dealing with tremendous amounts of weight, you know, so if a little bit is off, it could be catastrophic.

Mark Hiddleson: 12:00

Just the way things bolt together. And if you have, you know, almost any project involves 3 or 4 suppliers and they all have to dovetail their solution that bolts in. And then the install teams, you know, we have a saying that our company is that the the systems don’t install themselves. Somebody has to be able to read the read the blueprints, keep track of everything, stay on time. And so you.

John Corcoran: 12:22

You saw so in the early days you saw this opening in the market. Did it take off right away or was it more of a slog getting your early clients?

Mark Hiddleson: 12:31

It was really what’s it’s a wow. What a great, great question. So we did $1 million worth of business in our first year, and working as a sales rep for the company I was working for, I was probably when I left, I was averaging probably in the like 1.3, 1.4.

John Corcoran: 12:50

Okay.

Mark Hiddleson: 12:51

So it did kind of take right off. And especially because, you know, at that time I had somebody do all my paperwork, somebody to take care of my insurance, somebody to do all the, you know, health insurance and working with the state and taxes and bookkeeping and all. So really, when I started my company, it was just me. So I was doing all of that and still. So I think it did it did take right off.

I mean, then the funnier thing. So I want to just as a warning to entrepreneurs of that million dollars in sales, a lot of it was was profit, but just. I think I only so that I quit in in April and I made more money. I made like four times more money from the company I worked for up until April than I did the whole year, because it just it takes time for cash flow and things are going. Yeah, a lot of the start up costs. 

 And I really thought, you know, the million dollars in sales that that it would have resulted in quicker. So that’s why I’ve had people ask me like, how did you do it? Or weren’t you afraid? And like the way it worked out was like, if I would have known how it was going to work out, I probably wouldn’t have started.

Yeah. I mean, it turned out okay.

John Corcoran:14:12

Right? But sometimes it doesn’t.

It doesn’t materialize as quickly as you would like. 

Mark Hiddleson: 14:18

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And luckily for me, at that time, you know, my wife was super supportive. That was the other thing when it was really we started the business. I mean, she had 100% support. And, you know, a lot of the times we had enough money.

But she but she was a big part of the financial resources during that time because we went from making, you know, a lot of money working for someone else to now we start our own business. We kind of have to wait for things.

John Corcoran: 14:41

Right? Right.

Or even, you know, it could just be you have to wait for the money to come in. It’s just, you know, eventually it’s going to be there. It might be the same, it might be higher, but if it doesn’t come in a six month period, that’s a big chunk of time to wait.

Mark Hiddleson: 14:52

Exactly.

John Corcoran: 14:53

What? When did you start to get interested in personal development?

Mark Hiddleson: 14:59

So we’ve always, you know, as a young athlete, I was eager to learn, like the latest training I know techniques. When I was in high school, I went to this clinic in Berkeley where they were teaching visualization, and I was a pitcher at the time. And so your nerves, your emotions, a lot of how you perform has to do with how relaxed and poised you are under pressure. And so I’ve probably 13 or 14 when I went to a clinic and they were talking about visualization, I’m like, man, this is like a secret weapon Nobody knows about it. I’m going to use it.

And it was just something that ever since then, I’ve been passionate about it. You know, it’s one of those things once you get on the path, the path kind of pulls you in. You become part of the path. I got injured my senior year in high school. I thought the other thing, I thought I was going to be a pro athlete. 

 I just thought, because I have the body.

John Corcoran: 15:55

What did you play?

Mark Hiddleson: 15:56

Baseball.

John Corcoran: 15:57

Okay.

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