Using Holistic Practices in the Business World With Mark Hiddleson, Owner of Specialized Storage Solutions Inc.

Mark Hiddleson is the Owner of Specialized Storage Solutions Inc., which provides industry-leading warehouse storage solutions nationwide. Mark has been a storage racking industry professional since 1996. He became a top salesperson in the industry, working with a leading company that served Northern California before founding Specialized Storage Solutions Inc. in 2004.

Mark holds a master’s degree in holistic health education, which has helped him build a successful business model based on holistic principles and trust-based relationships. According to Mark, the more we nurture business relationships, the more successful the entire business ecosystem will become.

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

Mark Hiddleson shares how he got into the specialized storage solutions industry
Why Mark is determined to help employees find new opportunities — even if it means leaving his company
Mark and Greg Owens discuss what they’ve learned from practicing Aikido
Mark talks about why he went back to school — and how that pushed his sales through the roof
How Aikido and holistic health practices benefit you in the business world
The impact Covid has had on Mark’s business and clients
What Mark loves about the storage solution business
The kinds of projects Mark typically works on
Mark’s advice for people looking to enter the storage solutions industry

In this episode…

Relationships are one of the most important facets of a business. But cultivating and nurturing great relationships can be difficult without the necessary skills. So where can leaders turn to gain expertise and grow their business holistically?

With a master’s degree in holistic health education, Mark Hiddleson knows exactly what it takes to shape a business model based on holistic principles and trust-based relationships. One of the main factors that continues to help Mark’s business thrive is his practice in the Japanese martial art, Aikido. One of its main tenets is the emphasis on not only defending yourself, but protecting the attacker. How does this apply to business? Mark is here to tell you.

In this episode of Watching Paint Dry, Greg Owens sits down with Mark Hiddleson, Owner of Specialized Storage Solutions Inc., to talk about applying holistic health practices in any industry. Mark shares how he got into storage solutions, his advice for others wanting to begin their career in the industry, and how holistic and relationship-based practices can benefit your business.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by McCarthy Painting, where we serve commercial and residential clients all around the San Francisco Bay area.

We’ve been in business since 1969 and served companies such as Google, Autodesk, Abercrombie & Fitch, FICO, First Bank, SPIN, and many more.

If you have commercial facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area and need dependable painters, visit us on the web at www.mccarthypainting.com or email info@mccarthypainting.com, and you can check out our line of services and schedule a free estimate by clicking here.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:10

Welcome to the Watching Paint Dry podcast where we feature today’s top leaders, industry experts and more to discuss issues affecting facility managers and property owners. Now let’s get started with the show.

Greg Owens 0:29

Hello, everyone, this is Greg Owens with the Watching Paint Dry podcast. And we are continuing to talk to property managers, business owners, facilities managers, and that this entire sort of industry that’s sort of a niche, we’re just talking offline about this niche industry of taking care of buildings. And this podcast like all my podcasts are sponsored by McCarthy Painting, my painting company, we do work throughout the San Francisco Bay area, if you’d like to learn more, you can go to info@McCarthy painting.com. And that’s our email address info@McCarthy painting.com. You can go to McCarthypainting.com, to find out more about my company. And we’re doing all kinds of interesting projects. For some reason, we’re getting lots of calls for graffiti and graffiti removal right now, which is painful. I mean, it’s good. It’s great. We get this work, we’re doing some stuff for like, some of the autonomous vehicle companies and a bunch of companies that are in downtown San Francisco, but we literally will paint a wall and then that night it gets tagged again, which is just, that’s not fun work to do. But it’s work. And so we’ve been talking to those clients and trying to find solutions to that entire problem with me today is mark him the title lesson. But I get that right, Mark.

Mark Hiddleson 1:58

It’s, it’s almost it’s it also

Greg Owens 2:01

Hiddleson they asked before this, then I still mess it up. Welcome to the podcast. Mark. Thank you for being here today. I mean, a glorious spring day and in the San Francisco Bay Area after a bunch of rain.

Mark Hiddleson 2:14

Yeah, yeah, I’m ready for the great weather is gonna make our Easter party a lot more fun. And thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here. First time I’ve done something like this. So I really appreciate appreciate the opportunity.

Greg Owens 2:29

Oh, damn. Yeah, this is this is great. We’ll get into some interesting stuff, I’m sure. And how are you doing? Like personally, your family everybody. I see your room there. It’s very decorative. I like the like the trophies and it looks like things are awards and things like that. Yeah, those

Mark Hiddleson 2:44

are? Well, I’ve got my diplomas in the background, and I’ve got the legends of Dallas Cowboys. If you’ve already outed me a Dallas Cowboys fan. But yeah, this is my office. So you know, just keep like my my nine or 10 favorite books behind me so that I could grab them for quick reference. But yeah, this is my tiny little office in downtown Napa. Underneath in the bottom floor of an old Victorian that probably your reminded me needs a paint job.

Greg Owens 3:14

Oh, man, Victorians are interesting projects to do work on for sure. Yeah.

Mark Hiddleson 3:19

Well, this one’s about 120 years old. And yeah. Then 15 or 16 years since we’ve painted it. So.

Greg Owens 3:25

Right. And it’s probably got like 15 layers of paint on it or something? Yeah,

Mark Hiddleson 3:31

yeah. Yeah. There’s a lead disclosure somewhere in our stack of bottles.

Greg Owens 3:37

Oh, I bet that and I Yeah, and I haven’t been up to Napa in a little while. And I’m here in Marin County, which is not very far. 30 minutes away. How are things in that?

Mark Hiddleson 3:47

Things are awesome. I mean, the downtown is vital. People are getting around, and it’s a little bit of a bummer. Some of the restaurants that we used to be able to get into easily. We’re having to make reservations or wait in the line. Napa

Greg Owens 4:01

just heard that if you don’t make it, if you make trying to do the same day, you’re gonna have to do it before like six o’clock. You’ll have to eat early.

Mark Hiddleson 4:08

Yeah, exactly. are really late, like nine o’clock, which, you know, was about 30 minutes before my bedtime,

Greg Owens 4:14

for sure. Hey, what’s better than here in Marin. All the restaurants closed at like eight o’clock, except for like soul food or somebody?

Mark Hiddleson 4:22

That salido is one of my favorite places that always thought there if I’m in San Francisco, and I’m stopping halfway. I love to hang out. Yeah, that’s

Greg Owens 4:32

good. So tell me about tell me about what’s your specialized storage solutions? What? How would How did you get into this? What is it? Those kinds of?

Mark Hiddleson 4:41

Yes, so I got into it right out of college and I graduated in the late 90s where the internet existed but the way you look for a job I went to Sac State and they had a career development center that was full of three ring binders and I loved three ring binders since So I just, I was flipping through the pages, and I had to be eight years of graduating from college, I had eight years in college, I also had eight years of work experience. So it was a little unique. And I was already making pretty good money because I was an assistant sales manager at a Dodge dealership in Sacramento. And so it’s like, do I want to take a 50% pay cut to go do an entry level job right out of college, you know, because if you wanted to go into sales, you could sell like pagers, cell phones, I mean, those were the people uniform, you know, they were route sales jobs. But they all started about half what I was making, and then some of the engineers were doing better. So I found something that was kind of a combination, I was just flipping through, and I would look at the salary that didn’t make a certain amount, I wouldn’t even look at it. Which is, you know, they say, follow your dream, but I was looking for the dream with the money. And it just turned out this material handling business was kind of a combination of construction, engineering and sales, and they had a really high starting salary. So it turned out to be like a lot of these things are it was too good to be true. It was a up to number, just human nature, you see it, you know, oh, that’s what I’ll be making. So it was commissioned only. But I’d been on commission for probably five or six years going to school and being a college student, it really didn’t matter. If you made enough money you can make enough not to figure I can make it on commission. So I didn’t go work for that company. But it ended up just in the research in in the field of material handling material handling is like forklifts racking conveyor systems, cards, anything that you can think of it’s inside of a warehouse is what we do. So I was kind of excited about that. And I just started cold calling on people in the industry. And I found out that use the equipment was kind of a popular thing that nobody was doing. So there’s looked in the Yellow Pages for used equipment dealer and called on the owner and basically demanded an interview. He wanted to schedule something for, you know, a few weeks. I said, Look, I just graduated from school, I’ve been doing this for 30 days, I kind of know the industry, like, can you just sit down for like 15 minutes for a cup of coffee. And that started my career. And that was 25 years ago,

Greg Owens 7:17

25 years ago. So yeah, and tell me a little bit about. And so you sit down with this person, and you start talking through? Well, how did that conversation go? Well, Greg,

Mark Hiddleson 7:30

it was interesting to say, I sat down and he had graduated from Sac State about 15 years before I did so everything was just started lining up our values lined up, you know, the things he cared about, he asked me, you know why I wanted to work for a small company versus a corporation. I said, Well, my real goal is to be sitting where you’re sitting in that chair, right there. Right. So it it’s funny, because I’ve been on a lot of other interviews, and it was it was clunky. And I felt really confident about my sales ability or my ability to sell myself, but I just really, really wasn’t connected to any of these corporate or high rise offices. Somebody say, Oh, look, I have this great corner office. And I’m like, Well, I really don’t like fancy office is or something would just that doesn’t do something with with Ross. His name was Ross Clark, and a great mentor for me. We just we connected, you know, and there’s a simple thing I rode with him for for a day. And he was getting gas and said, Do you mind washing my windshield? Well, my grandfather taught me how to wash your windshield when I was like six years old. So I got out and I’m like, if there’s one thing I can do, you know, the service stations used that used to be a job. Yeah, right. Yeah. So I got out and he came back. He was like, wow, he’s like, you can really clean. It was just those kind of little things just, we clicked, you know, so it was it was a good relationship.

Greg Owens 8:53

You know, me I’m big into like mentor, mentor, mentors, mentorship and that kind of thing. And it’s such a valuable, there’s so many valuable lessons for some of us to learn some people really good just reading books and reading in, but sometimes it’s like meeting somebody and, and having that sort of like little connections. And so I know like one of my mentors, George Burke out of Atlanta, he, he was a painting contractor. It was like, He’s 10 years older than me. And he’s like, his company was two to three times my size, you know, and he just spent some time with me and we things really clicked right. And I’d met a lot of other people before that, but things didn’t click, and you just reminded me of how that’s such an important like, you know, for some people’s help and sort of like learning. It’s like, sometimes it’s nice to meet somebody that like, Oh, this is we kind of get a good vibe going here. Yeah, yeah, it was really it was great. I’m always and we actually, it made it a little hard to start my own company. And we did actually did have a falling out eight years later when I started my own company, even though we had had some of those conversations that were I really started because I wanted to own my own company was was my original goal, right. And it only took us eight years. But we did patch it up after eight years. And now we meet at least once a quarter for launch. And just because he’s still he’s my mentor, we’re still in the same business. And we actually, you know, collaboration is a lot more important than competition, he would call on the same clients, but we also we’ve helped him, you know, if he’s got an emergency, he needs something, if we have it in stock, we can help them and vice versa. So we’ve developed a relationship over the last eight years. So that’s great. Yeah, I mean, I think of like, a lot of employees that leave me when they leave me, they kind of tend to start their own company, right. And by a company, I mean, they just they go out on their own, and they’re painting and, you know, but they aren’t, they do become competitors. And I’m always surprised that they, they, they can still reach out to me for some, for some reason, they don’t do it as much, right? Are some of them, you know, feel a little bit like, like they’ve, but it’s like, no, no, be a good competitor, come and sit down with me and talk about the jobs you’re doing. And, you know, I’ll help you because there’s, there’s so much work out there, right. Like, it’s

Mark Hiddleson 11:06

there really is. Yeah, it’s and having relationships, I mean, the relationships the most important thing, right? And it’s one of the things that my old boss used to say, you know, our relationship is the most important, I want the best for you, and in everything. And I was like, Well, the best thing for me was the start. So, but we’ve been great. And I’ve had people and people, you know, other people that we’ve that worked for us, and they’re starting yet competitive companies, one of the things I’m most proud of, I mean, I don’t know about you, but I’ve had people I’ve got one. Man, I’ve known Mike for probably 25 years, he was a rookie forklift salesman, I kind of took him under my wing, because so many people have taken me under their wing, that I just I love it. When I see somebody and they have a lot of talent. They’re green, I’ll just automatically Well, Mike owns a company called North Bay distribution, and they’re doing three times the volume we’re doing. And I love that kind of stuff. You know, and,

Greg Owens 12:02

yeah, I’ve got a few. I’ve got a few, you know, few that have started their own companies to nerd, they’ve gone in different directions. And I was going in and, and in some ways, they’re doing a better job in some of those things. And I’m proud of that, because they, you know, they, they learned a lot. And I, you know, and I, you know, I think us as entrepreneurs, people don’t realise that a lot of times, it’s like, we’re always seeking like, the best potential out of somebody. Right? Yeah. And really, that’s what makes us I think, in a lot of ways sometimes sometimes drives us, right, and then it can hurt a little bit when somebody leaves, right. But that feeling like you found somebody that you saw some potential, and you help them realize that potential and then they were able to go on and do greater things. Man is sometimes there’s no better feeling than that. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s also an of feeling, right? Yeah. Like,

Mark Hiddleson 12:52

you kind of have to learn to love or for me, I’ve had to learn to love that a feeling. Yeah, this is an opening into something greater for them and greater for us. And it’s a it’s an opportunity that we have the same that i i belabor the, you know, opportunity and adversity but it’s something like the world is full of unsolvable problems brilliantly disguised as opportunities are the opposite of that. I said it the opposite way. But these unsolvable problems are really opportunities. So

Greg Owens 13:22

yeah, you know, there’s that there’s a joke about like, a shoe salesman going to Africa, you’ve probably heard this one where she tells me go, somebody tells this shoe salesman, you need to go to Africa, like two different shoe salesman, and I know like, No, I can’t sell shoes in Africa. Nobody’s wearing shoes. A lot of people barefoot, right? Like, they’re not gonna buy shoes. And the other salesperson goes, Man, this is great. Look at this opportunity. It’s so pretty has shoes. Wide open. Everybody’s a prospect, right? Everybody? This is This is big. And it’s a mindset, right? Like, it’s, it’s the mindset of quickly looking for the opportunities, right. And one of my mentors spoke about, he was my martial arts teacher, mentor, and he was talking to me about taking the hit as a gift. And not necessarily just a physical hit, because there’s energy in that right, like, you get punched in the face. You’re, you’re gonna be you’re gonna get a lot of energy. Yeah, but also, like, if something really devastating happens. There’s energy that comes in and if you look at that energy as positive rather than negative, then you have a better chance of seeing the bigger picture and the opportunities, right? Yeah. It travels on the same nervous system, right? The anxiety of worrying ending any excitement of being thrilled is the same nervous system. It’s just us labeling it one direction or another direction.

Mark Hiddleson 14:53

Yeah, yeah. I love the energy. It wasn’t Aikido was it was Aikido? Yeah, I studied Aikido and I love

Greg Owens 15:00

it Maybe that’s where I seen you. Yeah. Oh, it could be we have practice. Where did you study Aikido?

Mark Hiddleson 15:07

So Wendy Palmer owns? Well, it’s so you know, Wendy Oh, no. So she’s I went to JFK University for my master’s degree. And

Greg Owens 15:18

I saw this to your we’ll come back to when you but yeah, you have a master’s degree in holistic health education. I was trying to like, what’s the connection? What’s the connection is just storage solutions. Go go on you’re studying, you’re studying

Mark Hiddleson 15:37

Holistic Health. And part of it was you had to take 11 practicum. So it was you know, not just classroom knowledge, but applying this kind of on the field, you’re not in the stance, you’re on the field. And I had actually read when these books the intuitive body before I even applied to the school, right. So I had her I took her three day consciousness conscious embodiment class, I did the three day retreaded two different times in my master’s degree, because I just love the art. I read her books, I still, I mean, I still do a basic practice of centering practice that I learned from Wendy, when I read her book that’s still my go to, I mean, not really, meditation was just something I do to center. My energy, like you said, is it even in the front and the back? Left in the right, yeah, well, and just Yeah, so and I love that Akito it. I love this concept. You’re bringing it up, but the part of Aikido is to blend with your attacker that you’re actually not only defending yourself, but protecting the attacker. And every time I say that I get a little emotional because it’s a really cool part of that art. So

Greg Owens 16:46

yeah, it is. I mean, I and so it is the thing about Aikido that separates it from most of the other martial arts, right? Like if you want to learn to take somebody out, there’s other better martial arts, right? Like, really, if you run physically take somebody out. Yeah, you want to find a way to calm your nervous system down to then calm another person’s nervous system down. Aikido can teach you a lot of those kinds of skills. Wendy Palmer has been my teacher for over 25 years was my Kido teacher, which is I’ve got chills talking about this.

Mark Hiddleson 17:22

I have chills unfill All I am is chills right now. I don’t even know if I’ll be able to finish because I I admire you like I am you the way and but I mean, I feel like when he’s been my teacher with just the limited time I spent with her, it’s there’s one thing with when he she does this thing at the end where I mean, obviously she’s very skilled, right. And she did this exercise with a staff where she attacks you, if you’ve been trained in all these different things. And the one thing you were supposed to do is you can’t look the attacker in the eye, or they’re just they’re gonna kill you. It’s like, that’s the thing. And she’s like, I’m gonna look in the eye and everyone did it. And I did it because she put down a statue because he looked me in the eye. But I just couldn’t help it. You know, it was like, so hard. And he scrambles like falling in love, you know, you look at and you’re just like, wow, you know, you you’re gonna kill me. So I had to do it a couple of times to get it right. But it was really,

Greg Owens 18:17

it’s a powerful moment. Right.

Mark Hiddleson 18:21

Very powerful practice that she’s created. So,

Greg Owens 18:24

yeah, and I mean, i i At the age of like 2019 19 I read this book in search of the warrior spirit by Richard Strozzi, Heckler. And then I and this is before the internet, and I am like, wow, this Aikido thing sounds pretty amazing. Like, I should like, find out more about this. And it turns out like the dojo that Richard Wendy Palmer, and George Leonard and George letters started was like 10 blocks from my house here in Mill Valley. Right. And I walked down there that night, and I meet Richard, and then I started doing Aikido and then I ended up and so I was going into it, looking at it as like, I want to learn this martial art, not knowing that the teachers are some of the top people in the world when it comes to leadership embodiment and taking the skills that you can learn as a martial artist and applying them into the real world in your everyday life. Right. And so, George, George Leonard was a is a mentor of mine, and had passed away around 11 years ago, Wendy Palmer is still my teacher, you know, and she moved to Oregon, and we we actually she comes down here once a month back to Marin and teaches and and also does a weekly and I’ll send you information about it but it’s a weekly zoom call where she goes through her leadership embodiment skills for like an hour, you know, and she does, she does different topics and you can send her topics and it’s great because we whatever somebody wants to get into, she’ll do some research on it and bring her her knowledge around that subject. into it, and then also how to show up with your body. Right? Because we all forget about this body that like, you know, comes along for the ride. Yeah, this one? Well, sometimes I think it’s the other way around. I think we’re going along for the ride and don’t realize it. I love the analogy of like, you know, there’s like an elephant. And then there’s the little person on top right, and, and the little person on top of the elephant thinks they control the elephant.

Mark Hiddleson 20:27

Exactly.

Greg Owens 20:27

But if that elephant decides to go in a different direction, which is our nervous system in our limbic system, you’re done. Yeah,

Mark Hiddleson 20:35

yeah, it’s there’s patterns, energetic patterns, that that’s one thing when he taught me is not the focus on the content. It’s the patterns because the content can change, and you end up in the same patterns. And then when you know what it feels like, that’s the thing. It’s not in your head. It’s a feeling you’re like, Oh, I’m in the vortex. This is a, you know, no matter what inputs you throw in here, kind of my outputs are going to be anything that I’ve read in search of the warrior spirit to

Greg Owens 21:01

Oh, great. Yeah. Great is like if you could have a moment of choice, under stress, right? And that’s what when the whole thing is in so many ways, right? She’s teaching this through through a martial art Aikido, through low grade pressure people coming at you, or like somebody standing in front of you with a stick or a sword or something like that, to get your your nervous system jumps up when somebody’s standing in front of you with a weapon, right? Yeah, it’s on high alert, right. And then usually, you can spend, start to see these tendencies you have, and then start to figure out some ways to calm their nervous system down to have some other choices. Is the beautiful, beautiful way of putting it. I love that you’ve read the same book.

Mark Hiddleson 21:46

Yeah, I’ve read her book practice of freedom body. And a funny story about Richard Strozzi Heckler is that the reason I chose JFK was there was a teacher there named Richard heckler, and I thought it was Richard because this guy, he was a body. It was a somatic psychology class, and, but he was doing hakomi, which I’m not even familiar with Hakone, but it’s a different Richard Heckler, in the embodied psychology, somatic psychology industry, and it was to lay out already joined the school. Luckily, Wendy was on the staff. I thought they were both on staff. But I’ve read George Leonard stuff to mastery in the life we’re given the robot Michael Murphy. I mean, those are in my and I still do that ITP kata the life were given in George Leonard. So

Greg Owens 22:39

that’s great. Ya know, it’s so funny. Because I’m on a among the board, George put me on the board for ITP because it’s not they created him. And Michael Murphy created the nonprofit. And George George was my mentor. Right. And so George, I’m tall, George is tall. I mean, we connected right? He, he would wipe me out, like I’m like, 19 years old, right? Physically, like, throw me until I had nothing left and then tell war stories and tell like, you know, leadership embodiment things at 19 I could absorb that stuff. Because now I’m done. Right? Like, I can’t do any more Aikido so I’ll listen.

Mark Hiddleson 23:15

Yeah, that’s how you do where mouth?

Greg Owens 23:18

Wear wear me out physically. And then I’ll open to like, like, the stories, right? And the bigger meaning of things. And yeah, I mean, he is. So he started integral transformative practice ITP. And then that that as a nonprofit to help, because there’s a lot of people out there reading their book, the life we were given, and we’re doing the practices, the condos and things like that, but with no support. So then, so I’m on that nonprofit board and get to meet with Michael Murphy, who’s on unbelievably amazing. Like, every time I meet with him, I take like three pages of notes, you know, yeah. He’s like, maybe he’s like, 93 years old now or something. And, yeah, I ran into

Mark Hiddleson 24:00

him. And so when he was eating, and I was there with my wife, and I wanted to go up and say hi, and I didn’t, I thought, Man, I just want to leave this guy and peace. Because if I was, you know, famous, or well, not every so and so off the street to come and say hi, and not kind of thinking, Man, I should have said hi. I should have just on a podcast, and, and he’s pretty still great.

Greg Owens 24:23

I never thought of having him on a podcast. I have him on mine. Yeah, I mean, he’s, he’s, he thinks so beyond like, his vocabulary is so beyond my ability that sometimes I’m like writing down like, I need to look up this word. And this word is so smart. Right? Yeah. And they’re doing some really good things in the leadership department to ITP. Right. And taking that same those same concepts that Michael Murphy and George put out there. Right. And they have, they have ongoing things at esslyn and that kind of stuff. Although in the last two years, I don’t think they were We’re doing any live in person things. Yeah.

Mark Hiddleson 25:02

Yeah. That’s fantastic. I can’t believe it’s such a great connection. Hey, ya know, we wanted to reach out to Wendy. So if I could get him involved in that committee, that’d be that’d be

Greg Owens 25:11

done. Oh, yeah. Every Tuesday at 6pm. Almost every Tuesday. Let me rephrase that. Because sometimes she’s traveling but when she’s not traveling 6pm We do. We do a it’s, it’s it’s leadership embodiment, right? It’s the I think, what’s the title? It’s like, embrace the mystery. Because, because she, she, she had to say, and I believe this is true, too. For myself. Like, she used to think that, like, life is like, maybe like 60% mystery and, and 40% You kind of know it right now. She’s more like, since COVID. She’s like, I was wrong. It’s like 90% mystery, and I know, just a tiny little fraction.

Mark Hiddleson 25:51

99 In one,

Greg Owens 25:54

maybe it’s that? Yeah. I mean, in my, in my my belief is more along those lines, like, I don’t know anything anymore, right? Like, everything is up in the air. And I know my sort of, in my own experiences that I have to question.

Mark Hiddleson 26:10

Yeah, I think it’s a more exciting place to stand to win rather than average got all this figured out. It’s was really no fun in that. And the only reason I know that is because I’ve spent most of my life.

Greg Owens 26:23

It’s a heavy weight to carry to write. And that’s something that Wendy Palmer has been great at is is how to like lighten the load, both physically and through your body, but also mentally through your mind, because those two pieces being so attached, right? And if you can just have a lighter spirit, right? Yeah, it’s a better I feel it’s a much better way to navigate the world. Yeah,

Mark Hiddleson 26:47

it really is. It made a huge difference. My boss, when I went to school, that was elite. And within the first few years, I went to work for the company, I was leading sales. And one of the reasons I wanted to go back to school was you’re not seeing my income doubled within a couple of years. And then the two thousand.com, the first.com thing happened. And I saw it go down by 30 or 40%. And I thought, Man, I’m relying on something that’s totally related on the economy, you know, because everybody got hit didn’t matter. You were hustling or your clients. I mean, we were kind of all. So I thought I want to go back to school to have a skill, something that he could teach no matter what economy and people are always going to need. And I was going to go into something like, you know, master’s in business or something. And I decided on holistic health, because I was thinking this is a long term. Look, you’re gonna need this your whole life, everybody’s gonna need this, you know, no matter what happens. And my boss said, Well, you know, your sales are gonna go down by 40% If you go to school and everything, and what happened is my sales went up by 50% When I was going to school because it was teachers like Wendy and I have a lot of teachers, nobody quite I mean her. And there’s another teacher, Julie, but it was that communication, the relationships and not being scared to just let the fear drop, and just be present for somebody, whatever it is, if they’re mad at you, or they’re disappointed, or, you know, it was just, my boss was amazed. He’s like, how is it that you’re spending an extra 2030 hours in the classroom and your sales are going through the roof? But that’s the reason why it’s people like Wendy and Karen, that gift?

Greg Owens 28:19

That is great. Yeah, I agree. I mean, like, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s such a wonderfully beautiful skill to learn to be a better human. But then it turns out, it’s good for business. Relationship building, and it’s good for connecting. Right? And, yeah, I mean, in you become more aware of how you show up and how you walk through a door and how you, you know, you’re Yeah, I mean, I mean, it’s, it’s something I use every single day, right? Like, just the other day, when I’m painting contractor, we do get paint on things, right? We get people very upset at us, right? I mean, paintings easy, you put paint on things you’re supposed to put a paint on, and not get paint on things you’re not supposed to put paint on, right? But even professionals will get pains and things right and, and you know, and customer was really upset and mind just turning to their side and looking at the problem from their viewpoint, right, which is an aikido move that it is over and over again. And then even like, like a green like looking going, I can see how frustrated you are like, it’s hot look, it’s there. And they’re in there and like, you know, Mrs. Jones, we’re gonna we’re gonna make sure that we, we slow down, we’re going to take care of this and I’m going to talk to the employees and we’re going to do better right, and she felt so much better after that conversation, right? Yeah. All the time.

Mark Hiddleson 29:43

Yeah, it’s hard because you know, you made a mistake mistake what the other person wants. They want to feel heard. And so that’s the first thing you have to do is go look at Yeah. Oh, Pete said that are clarifying. And there’s no I’m not even talking about that. I’m talking about this. Oh, no. Hey, In the ticket, all right, and then.

Greg Owens 30:02

And what’s interesting is we had gotten a little bit of paint on the surface. There was old paint on it, right? That wasn’t us. But she is, for the first time thinking it’s us, right? And if I go in there, and I’ve been doing this for, like, 30 years, if if I look down and say, That’s all like this little spot over here is definitely us will clean off like easy, right? But these other spots, that’s not us, right? But if I said that, she’s going to, we’re going to we’re going to be in that fight, right? We’re going to be pushing and pushing back, right energy, it’s an energy against versus blending. And I know that right. And so what I what I tend to do is like, Oh, hey, like, but then I get down on my knees. And I kind of look at it closer. I’m like, Oh, wow, look, this is definitely us. It came right off. Look at just an easy, what’s going on with this? I don’t understand like, and I know. But look how hard this is. And she’s like, Oh, maybe that was there already.

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Using Holistic Practices in the Business World With Mark Hiddleson, Owner of Specialized Storage Solutions Inc.

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