Join host Aaron Burnett as he sits down with Mark Sims, founder of FIS, to talk about how a career-ending injury, a bankruptcy, and an embezzlement pushed him from loneliness into isolation. They also discuss the coffee meeting and the dues bet that finally got him into EO, and the hard-earned lesson that the work becomes purpose once you stop trying to do it alone.
Note, this podcast features real entrepreneurs sharing real challenges and solutions. No pitches, no sales - just honest conversations about the moments that shape successful businesses.
The Price of Isolation
Mark: As entrepreneurs, we get accustomed to being lonely along the way. But I think at some point that becomes isolation. And if we're in isolation too long, we lose the ability to see through a lens where we might need another perspective. I know for me, I'd had things happen — a college football career ending because of an injury that should never have happened, a business I was working for going bankrupt just as I had left to start my professional career, and one of the first people I'd hired being someone who helped me in finance and embezzled from me. So I was just done with anybody helping me. I'd taken isolation almost to resentment. I didn't see myself as an entrepreneur. I saw myself as a grinder — someone who was just destined to do it alone.
Russell Benaroya and the Dues Bet
Mark: If it wasn't for a few things... it wasn't for a really good friend, an industry friend in Indianapolis who was part of an EO chapter there, who said, "I think this is community." We'd known each other for about a year in an industry group I had formed. He said, "You've been EO for me. I think this would be great for you." He referred me to the Seattle chapter and I just kept ducking it. It wasn't until they finally pinned me down. I'll give a lot of credit to Russell Benaroya. I finally sat down for a coffee with him, and he said, "Tell me why you can't be a part of EO." I said, "I'm just so busy for EO right now." I gave him the whole busy badge. He said, "Great. The best people I know for EO are the ones who are too busy for it." And he just went right into the onboarding as if it were a done thing. I felt so cornered that I couldn't respond otherwise.I went home and talked to my wife. She was very much in support of it — she's been a spousal member for fifteen years now. I even told my friend Craig back in Indianapolis, "I don't know that I want to commit." And he said, "I'll tell you what — if you do it for a year and determine that you don't get ROI from it, I will pay your membership dues, because you've done a lot more for me in our industry group than that." The story is that I've never had a situation where he had to pay me anything. It's been tremendous ROI. But I did not want to join.
Aaron: So that story — someone recommending EO and then offering to refund dues if at the end of the year the person didn't find value — I've interviewed probably twenty to twenty-five EO members. That's the third or fourth time I've heard it.
Mark: A long-time forum mate of mine here in Seattle — who's now in Texas, Mike Ross is his name — he and I had started that. Because we shared that experience. We'd bring somebody in and think: whoever did it for me, why not pay that forward? I don't know that anyone has ever had to be paid back. But what it does is remove the excuse of ROI risk. Because you don't know what you don't know.
From Lonely to Grateful
Aaron: Maybe share a bit more about your entrepreneurial journey.
Mark: I always knew I was a hard worker, and I always knew I would figure it out and fail forward. But being around a community — going from lonely to isolated to having people who are weird like me, who understand the risk profiles and the behaviors that come with them — I went from joining an organization in 2008 that I didn't think I belonged in, betting on somebody to refund me and challenge my busy badge, to nine years later being president of the chapter. Now seventeen years in, I've helped start the tenured members program. I don't know where my life would be without EO. If someone had asked me seventeen years ago whether my life would look like this, I would have said, "That's probably not me — but I'm sure it's for some people." I'm incredibly grateful.
Aaron: What changed in terms of your sense of yourself that enabled this much more expansive success?
Mark: I realized I had a lot more fear than I was willing to admit. I was willing to work hard and risk a little bit — but not risk a key hire, not risk a more material investment, not risk going into another market to expand. Some of that came from the period where the rug kept getting pulled out from under me: the injury, the bankruptcy, the embezzlement. I thought maybe I'm not supposed to have a company. Maybe I'm just supposed to have a handful of people and call it a job that I semi-own.
Aaron: Was there a moment — an inflection point — where your willingness to take risk changed and a more expansive future started to seem possible?
Mark: I was in forum for about a year and I realized I had some financial freedom but no other freedom to speak of — whether from customers or other day-to-day demands. I was miserable. I finally opened up — not just to presenting a problem and thinking about it, but to actually solving it: getting the right help, building a better structure, even if it meant a short-term pay cut. A little short-term pain for long-term gain. That was what started it. Fortunately, I made a couple of good key hires.
The Ten-by-Ten: Starting FIS
Aaron: Tell me about your primary company, FIS.
Mark: FIS is the company I started when that first company I worked for went bankrupt. I started in a similar industry, out of a ten-by-ten storage unit in Tacoma. It was just hitting the pavement — bought a van, hired an individual I thought might work for me for a couple of years. He ended up working for me for seventeen, and we have an award named after him at the company. We went from just an idea to now having thousands of customers all across the Western US. FIS is more the engine: it started with just a few pallets of product, a van, myself, and one individual who was in the twilight of his career — came on for a couple of years, liked it so much that he stayed a lot longer.
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Before we continue, I want to tell you about the community that made this podcast possible — the Seattle chapter of EO, that's Entrepreneurs' Organization. It's not networking, it's not selling to each other. It's real entrepreneurs sharing real challenges and solutions. If you have a business that does at least a million a year in revenue and you're curious about joining a community that gets what you're going through, check out EO Seattle.
EO as a Leadership Development Engine
Aaron: You mentioned imposter syndrome — that's been a pretty consistent thread in all the conversations I've had. Is it something you continue to wrestle with, or have you reached a point where that's a distant memory?
Mark: I believe it evolves. As we develop, our standards change. I expect more from myself today than I did seventeen years ago — probably more than seventeen months ago. But I also give myself more latitude to make mistakes on the way to success. My intent needs to be right, my habits need to be right, but if I make a mistake along the way, that's just part of testing the beta toward a desired output. It's a journey.
Aaron: How has your experience in EO informed how you lead your company?
Mark: I believe EO, more than anything else, is about leadership development — not just community. I was able to find better leaders and develop leaders because it helped me develop as a leader. As I leveled up, the individuals around me either leveled up with me or we found people who were a better fit.
Aaron: Can you think of a particular tool or practice you learned through EO that helped you strengthen your culture?
Mark: I used to think core values were — it's interesting, because I believed in them when I played college football. I believed you lived by a code of ethics and values. But when it came to running a company, I'd absorbed other influences: put your head down, work hard, and don't get caught up in corporate riffraff. What I've learned is that culture and core values are everything. It's about identifying those values, living them, and hiring by those standards. Not just stating them on a wall or mentioning them in a quarterly speech, but making them a daily campaign — leading by example. I've been able to see people not just succeed professionally but buy homes, go on dream vacations, carry titles that brought tears to their eyes. People who were, to some extent like me when I joined EO: not believing they belonged, feeling like an imposter. Now they're individuals leading a department or a number of managers — and the suit they tried on finally fits.
When the Work Becomes Purpose
Aaron: My sense of you is that your mission and focus has shifted and evolved over the last couple of years. Can you talk about that?
Mark: There's a different reason why you do it. It's not about a financial metric, or scarcity, or survival mode, or proving anything to anyone else. It's a more purposeful, driven objective. I don't have some of the same goals I once did. I have goals that are likely loftier than before — just not so much focused on my own personal financial achievement.
Aaron: How has what you're getting from EO changed and evolved over the years of your membership?
Mark: What I know today that I didn't know in 2007 or 2008, when I was kicking the can around about whether to join, is the power of an idea and a shift — the different trajectory that puts you on. At one point you're thinking about just the blocking and tackling of the day at hand. But if there's an idea, a spark, a habit, a different process you can implement, or an introduction — your network ultimately becomes your net worth. Not just in a financial investment, but in a conversation with someone who has knowledge, who might know someone who can give you that edge. EO accelerates that. There's so much of it here in our chapter, and globally — having been president, having served on the board, having been to universities and global explorations. It's a vast network to tap into.
Aaron: My sense of what you've begun to do over the last couple of years is that you are on a mission to teach and to cultivate. What do you want people to know?
Mark: Primarily, to believe in yourself. Because there's going to be a long time when maybe you're the only one. I think of those times in the ten-by-ten storage unit — it was probably me and my own very slow clap of "You can do this." Sometimes you have to ramp yourself up.Beyond that, it's realizing what works. Most of the time for me, that's been consistency. I'd joke that beyond some head contact from football, I'm probably more of a blunt instrument than most of the smart people in the chapter. But I did fine. I'm very consistent, very committed, and if I set my mind to something, I'll do it. That will take anyone far.So when I meet people who aren't certain, or who want an outcome but aren't ready to do more than dip their toe in, I want to help them unpack that — get clear about what they really want the outcome to be. And if there's enough emotion, enough excitement about what that outcome is, then to look honestly at what it would take. Often it's simpler than it looks. It's usually the consistent, disciplined day-to-day approach. And it works.
Aaron: I think that's wise. One of the things I see you doing — you post to social media every day.
Mark: I do a first Monday of the month motivational. I try to post things that are more positive — leadership, impactful, community-driven. I don't actually post to build a brand around access or the special things I get to do. I rarely post those things anymore because I don't want that to be what I'm about. What's most significant to me is something about personal development, because every day I get to make a choice to get a little bit better or a little bit worse. In my years on this journey, I haven't always gotten better every day. I've had some valleys and had to scramble to get back to the net positive. That's exactly where consistency and commitment pays off.
The Wartime CEO Moment
Aaron: Can you think of a moment in your involvement in EO — a moment of triumph or crisis — where EO really delivered?
Mark: COVID was interesting. I found myself with a very recession-resistant business: restaurants, retail, office buildings, arenas and venues — except when everything shuts down. I had that conversation with a couple of EO peers and forum mates. We walked through the advantages and disadvantages. It wasn't them who came up with the answer — it was me, through their questioning. I thought of a book I'd read that said, "The big don't eat the small; the fast eat the slow." I knew that between our connections to manufacturers and our ability to pivot, we could move so much faster than everyone else. And that's exactly what we did. In that year, we went from losing almost ninety percent of our recurring revenue overnight to, within a few months, doing things we'd never done: different marketing, online sales, PPE, disinfection, nebulizers. I sourced through a member in another chapter over half a million dollars of COVID tests. Things I would never have imagined. It was a real wartime CEO moment. And I feel like it primed the business to do even better once we came out of it.
What to Tell Someone Who Doesn't Want to Join
Aaron: What have I not asked you that you'd like to talk about?
Mark: I think you haven't asked me what someone should consider when they don't want to join EO.
Aaron: That's a great question. What should someone consider?
Mark: First: how else will you know what you might be missing out on? EO provides real FOMO — not just the fun, because I think sometimes it gets framed as meeting people and networking. But when you really get involved, it's so much learning and enrichment that you can apply to every aspect of your life, leadership and otherwise. I don't know of another organization that does it quite like this, particularly one that's peer-driven. If people don't lean in and at least give it a try, they're missing out. I would have missed out.
Aaron: Russell Benaroya is the reason I'm in EO as well. It was a coffee meeting.
Mark: Did he pin you down too?
Aaron: Pretty much, in the very gracious and kind way that he has of doing it.
Mark: I'm forever grateful to him. I don't know that members are pursued the way he pursued people back then. Not in a creepy sort of way — but in a very professional, consistent drip campaign. Always being there: a call, a note, a text. And sincerely interested. "I just want the opportunity to have a coffee with you and learn about what your friend referred you and why you answered the email." It was just enough to get the foot in the door. Cheers to Russell. And I'm grateful for all the people I've served with, served for, and who served for me when I was leading — because that is such a gift. To lead leaders. And to take that back to your companies, your boards, your families, and be better for it.
Aaron: Thank you for taking the time to talk.
Mark: Absolutely. This was good.
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