When a team hires for potential and ensures that everyone is included in its success, it can unlock a ton of new opportunities in the years to come. Tina Fox is joined by Mark Watson, who shares how they prioritize a culture-first leadership at Exterior Medics. He breaks down the benefits of investing heavily in employee growth through mentorship programs and the cultivation of a team-oriented environment. Mark also talks about the secrets behind his impactful leadership approach, from treating success as a journey rather than a destination to being a constant seeker of new knowledge.

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Never Arrive With Mark Watson

Thanks so much for joining us. I have an exciting person on my show today, a friend, an entrepreneur, a fantastic mentor, a business person, and an all-around inspiration to me. His name is Mark Watson with Exterior Medics. I just know him as Mark. I met Mark about ten years ago. We met through networking. When you meet a lot of people in a networking room, I know that sometimes networking can be very daunting because it is fast-paced and people are always on their A game.

There is a lot of handshaking and cards being thrown around. Now and again, you get some real gold in the mines. My gold was certainly Mark Watson. I have asked Mark to come on the episode because of his story, background, and why he is an inspiration to me. I just wanted to bring that all out to share with you all because I know that if there is gold for me, there is going to be gold for others. I am really excited to have this opportunity to chat with you, Mark. Thank you for coming on with me.

You are amazing. I’m happy to be here. Good to be talking. It has been a long time coming, and it is getting on camera like this. We have had many conversations over coffee and networking, as you mentioned, and lunches and things like that. Happy to connect with you again and connect with the audience.

Mark Watson And How Exterior Medics Came To Be

Let’s kick off with how we met because I am trying to think of the moment, and my brain is not functioning as well as it used to be. I am like, “I know I met him at a networking meeting, but there were a lot of people.” Do you remember anything about the early days of us meeting?

Other than me being at least one of the most, if not the most, uncomfortable people in the room, I think at the time. I know it was at a BNI event over there in McLean. As far as the actual intimate details of the matter, no. I remember you always being so well put together in so many ways. Again, I am just a stumbling, bumbling fool just trying to make it, just trying to fit in.

That is something about Mark. You have this self-deprecation and this level of humility that always keeps you grounded, but it is absolutely not necessary because I watched Mark grow his business, and I was really fascinated because he is growing a business. Here is something really interesting. Exterior Medics, for those who do not know, is a trade business. Mark, can you give us a little bit of background about Exterior? Give us your 30-second pitch on Exterior Medics.

I have not done one in a while. My 30-second pitch. Exterior Medics is a specialty home improvement contractor. We specialize and focus on the exterior facade, the building envelope of the property. We do work in both residential construction, so where people live, as well as condominium complexes, which typically is where people live, but that gets a little bit more into the commercial realm of things, larger-scale projects. The same things that we’re doing on residential homes, roofing, siding, gutters, windows, doors, that thing, but just on larger buildings at a greater scale.

Let’s talk about how you got into this business, which, by the way, was a great 30 seconds. I would not have dined the buzzer on you. I also remember you used to always say, “Exterior Medics, we do house calls.”

We make house calls. That is right. We are like a doctor for your home.

It is like a jingle that I will never lose in my head. Exterior Medics was a small business that you and your partner, Joe, grew. How did you all decide that you were going to build a company in exteriors?

Joe and I worked together, actually, for two different companies before starting Exterior Medics. When we started working together, we were working in the insurance restoration field. We were doing a lot of work directly with homeowners still, but we worked with insurance companies negotiating claims for things like hail damage, wind damage, and things like that. If a large loss came about in the area, we would work with local homeowners to make their homes whole again. We pivoted from that because we did not want to chase storms for a living.

We did not want to move around. We wanted to have our roots grounded somewhere. We were both building young families, establishing our families. It needed to be something that was a little bit more grounded in that way. We started working for a local roofing company, a great company in the Northern Virginia area, and we were selling. We were selling home improvements, and again, a great company, and they were really focused on what they did. New sentence. As we were working with them, there were certain trades that they did not touch.

For example, they did not touch masonry. Joe and I would oftentimes, we would go out, and we would diagnose problems for homeowners, and we would find that not only the roof that they were calling us out for, but they also had chimney masonry problems or other things like that. We would refer companies out, and sometimes the companies that we referred out were good, and sometimes they were not so good.

We found ourselves being really reliant on the skill sets and the specialties of others. We decided that we wanted to take matters into our own hands and be in control of that a little bit more for ourselves and offer holistic solutions for our homeowners. That is where the name Exterior Medics was born. It was that we were not just roofers, we were not just siding guys or masonry.

We were a complete building envelope, and we consider ourselves to be like a doctor for the house. We really appreciated the building science aspect of construction, and that led us to form the basis of what Exterior Medics was to become. We wanted to make sure that when we met you, we could leave you better than we found you, and we did not have to leave you in somebody else’s hands in order to fulfill that promise.

I love what you just said about when we met you, we wanted you to know that by the time that we left, it was going to be better. That should be the premise that every business starts with. You worked in a job, you saw issues with your clients, and you decided that you were going to try to solve their issues. The more you solved issues, but being reliant upon others, you decided, “We can do this, and we can control the quality, and we can start doing this ourselves.” Can we back up a click because what I find so interesting, two things.

One, I know about you. The other one, I am wondering, because I do not know if we have ever actually talked about this. I know that you graduated from high school and you decided that you were going to go to college. You did not end with a college degree. That was not going to be your path. Can you take us back to that? My second question was to ask you about things like how you learn how to sell. You just said that like it was a matter of, “Everybody can do this. We just went out and sold,” and everybody is like, “That is not as easy as it seems when you’re young.”

To take it back as far as my path, a little, unorthodox, I guess, in the constraints of what everybody tells us that we need to do. As long as you go to high school, and then you graduate from high school, you go to college. I certainly have no knocks about that. That’s a great path for a lot of people. For myself, I moved to the Northern Virginia area when I was nineteen years old, and I enrolled in community college.

I was going to Nova here in the local area and doing just fine with it, but not really feeling passionate, not really feeling like I had a path or knew what my path might be. I answered an ad. It was at the Washington Post at the time when newspaper ads were still the way that old guys like me answered opportunities. That opportunity just read very simply. It was like our top guy made an exorbitant amount of money. If you think you can handle that type of cash, call here. I answered this ad not knowing what the job was for. I was just like, “Why not?”

I went for that opportunity. I went for the interview. I got offered the job, and it was in the insurance restoration business. What I did not know at the time was that it was full commission. We paid for everything. We set ourselves up as 1099s. You had to have your own vehicle, you paid for your own shirts, you got your own phone, and everything was on you. You worked for this organization, and you went out and sold. By selling, I say it was knocking on doors, which I believe is probably the toughest way to sell.

I was knocking on strangers’ homes, telling them that they had storm damage that they did not know, that they had convinced them that I should get up on their roof and check for this storm damage. After doing so, if they did have storm damage convincing them that they needed to call their insurance company, but also that when they call their insurance company and come out, I should be the person to represent them. This ninety-year-old punk kid is a stranger. I looked nothing like what you would expect as far as a construction professional.

I was driving a Chevy Econoline van, a brown van, with champagne stripes on the side. I kid you not, Tina. I did not have a ladder rack on this van. My ladder was a red aluminum tip ladder, double, an extension ladder that I slid through the back of the van. I popped the seats. The back seat was awesome. It would pop down onto a bench or into a bed. I had that pop down so my ladder could fit in. I rode down the street with my arm on one ladder, the hand on the steering wheel of the other. When folks said, “Okay, yeah.” I get on the roof, and they would look at my van.

They were like, “Do you need a ladder?” I am like, “No, I got it.” I would pop those back doors open. I would slide them open. To answer your question, how did I learn how to sell? You learn a lot of great lessons in life through a lot of failure. Doors slammed in my face, going, “Is it something I said? Maybe I will not say that again.” Is it them? Sometimes it is just not a reflection, as you have taught me so many times, rejection is not a reflection necessarily of you or your ideas all the time. That is a lesson that you taught me a long time ago. Beyond anything else, I just had a belief and a determination that I could do this. A grit that would not allow me to, for those failures, for those rejections to be something that I was going to take, and not allow it to make me better.

First of all, there is a song by a group that says, “100 bad days means 100 bad stories and 100 bad stories make you interesting at parties.” Here we are, we’re not maybe not at a party, but we’re interesting on a podcast because I did not even know about the Econoline van. I did not know that. I knew that you were 100% commission. I knew you were knocking on doors. I knew it was a hard way. There is so much to unpack there.

Cultivating A Strong Level of Resiliency

I just got to pause because some of the things that I am hearing, the angst of the younger generation that is going out in the workforce, particularly with AI that is now out there, is that they feel as though this lower rung of the entry level is being lost to what AI could do in place of them for chief partner and all of that. To hear your story of basically school of hard knocks as to how you ended up learning sales. I loved how you said it. Sometimes I was like, “Maybe I should not say that and sometimes maybe it is just them.”

Let’s talk about what that felt like, the level of resiliency that you needed to have in order to get up again. You’re not making a paycheck unless you close a deal. I guess the audience is going to be like, “How did you feed yourself? If you’re not making any money yet and you’re a hundred percent commission and you have to drive your van, you’ve got to put gas in the van. Right now, gas is $4 a gallon. People are thinking that’s expensive, and you’re getting a door slammed in your face. How did you feed yourself, and how did you pick yourself back up every day to go back out and do it again?

I scraped a lot as far as how I could feed myself and, quite literally, how I fed myself. I remember when I was driving this van, and like you said, because if you did not sell, I could do some draws early on. I could draw up against future commissions. That is only after you get a couple of sales under your belt, so that the company knows that they have got a little bit of collateral if they need it. It was very sparse as far as the income that I had. I remember one of my territories was in Warrenton, Virginia. Warrenton’s a little bit more built up than it was then.

I drive 45 minutes out to my territory in my van. I literally had a big Ziploc bag filled with change, like change that I had saved over the years and put in there. I kid you not, there was a gas station that I used to stop at in Warrenton, and I would fill up whatever I could with gas. They had this turnstile on the corner at the cash register, and it was dollar pizza, dollar slices. That’s what I used to eat. I used to go there oftentimes, not condoning this, I am not suggesting that from a healthy living standpoint that you should eat dollar-style pizza from the gas station.

That is what I had. I would eat this dollar, this dollar slice of pizza. I would just scrape by. There are some days when you would eat a slice of pizza, and that was it, other days when you had some sales, and you would have a little bit more to go off of. Of course, I had folks around me to support me. I do not want it to be all doom and gloom. My parents were very supportive. I do not come from a lot of money. We always had enough.

I was not on the streets or anything like that. My parents were supportive to a certain extent, as much as they should have been. I was at that point when I dropped out of school. I was on my own from that standpoint. It was a decision that I made. It was not one that my parents necessarily understood why I was doing it. I had enough conviction around that this is what I needed to do. At that point, all they could do was support me, even if it was begrudgingly at first.

You go out there, you’re eating your dollar pizza. You do have the love and support of parents who cannot do any more, but you’re taking accountability for yourself at nineteen. It doesn’t seem like that old when you’re like, just got to figure this out. You’re out there, and you’re getting doors slammed in your face. What makes you decide that you’re going to go do this again?

Again, it was a belief, it was a conviction that what I was doing was the right path for me. Whenever I got a yes, that yes was powerful. It was just another notch and said, “You’re doing the right thing. You can do this.” This is a service that people need. There was a belief that what I was doing was for good. It was not only for the good of others, but it was for the good of myself that this was something that I could do. I really just had passion around what I was doing.

I really found that I was enjoying the home improvement industry. I came from a blue-collar family. Again, I never necessarily work with my own hands for very long. I was a laborer for a short period of time on a construction site that was miserable, but it was work, and it was good, honest, hard work. I always enjoyed construction. I enjoyed it around the beginning of the industry. Some coworkers that I really enjoyed being with. Again, there was this belief that I knew I could do it.

Again, just something that was within me that told me that this was the right thing for me to be doing. Doors slammed in your faces is one thing I had. One time, I had a guy come out of his house unexpectedly with a hammer and quite literally chase me down his driveway. Again, maybe it was just because I was young and dumb and just naive enough not to take that as a warning sign. I knocked on his neighbor’s house and continued on.

You were probably very fast.

Faster than I am now for sure.

Welcoming And Embracing The Fear Of Rejection

You do all of this. Talk to me about trades because one of the things, as you know, I have got two sons and a bonus son. As I am getting my younger two sons to consider their future, I always lay out the options. There are lots of options. You can go to work. You can go and serve the country. You can look at community college, you can look at a four-year college, because we’ve been saving for them to go do that if they choose. You’ve got to get in, of course. There are lots of options in how you educate yourself and how you get experience. Would you have done anything differently? What advice would you give to your younger self as far as these options that exist, and what did you glean from your experience?

To the question of whether I would do anything different, I do not believe so because it’s easy to say, at almost 46 years old, would I do anything different? Forty-six-year-old me, I am sure, would have done a lot of things differently. Those same things that I would have done differently, maybe would have completely altered my path. I would not have had maybe the same courage that I did.

Again, courage, stupidity, you can toss it up and call it one of the two, but I do not think I would have been bold enough to chase the same way. I was still again, full of just, I did not know what I did not know, and that was to my benefit. That fear of rejection was not there. In some ways, had I not done it then, maybe that quickly would have been, that fear of rejection would have grown. Before you know it, you put yourself in a box, and you do not naturally find whatever your special hidden talents are. Your encodings, maybe.

For me, I do not think I would tell myself to do anything differently. Maybe I would have bought a different truck sooner or figured out a way to get rid of the common van. I hold that part of the story as funny as it sounds, as I say it, and hopefully, the audience gets a kick out of it. All of those things I look at, and they’re all steps along the journey that helped me get to where I am. Without that grit, without the failure points and being difficult, I do not know. I really hold on to that dearly as far as that struggle, those struggles that I have.

Who was mentoring you at the time, or did you have any mentors?

My mentors were some of my peers, my sales managers, and there were different guys who were in the industry. At that time, at least in the early days, I listened to a lot of tapes and CDs. Those were real things. Most of your audience may not even know what those are.

A condo line, I am thinking you might even have had an 8-track because my family had one in ’50, and it had an 8-track.

I had a cassette track. Yeah, cassette player for sure. My CD player was one that I plugged this cassette into, and then it plugged in. It had an adapter for my CD player. I do not think it had a legit CD player in there. I would listen to some Brian Tracy and Zig Ziglar and some of these, these sales masters that were very well-known at the time, maybe not as well-known now, which would be a shame because these are guys, the pioneers of the sales industry, that at least in the sales industry that I grew up in.

Later on, after that, once I started getting involved, more involved, I got into a lot more formal training. The first formal sales training that I started doing was once I left the first company and went on to the second one, and it was by a guy named Dave Yoho, Yoho Associates, and there was a guy named Jerry Roth, who was the account rep that worked with the company I was with. I spent a lot of time with him listening and learning, as well as their sales manager and some other managers there, but just taking in everything I could, talking to the veterans, and beyond just talking to sales professionals when I was selling.

I talked to the crews. I would find out what they did, how they did it. That helped me connect more with the work so that when I met with a client or my prospect, I could speak more intelligently about the wants and needs. When they had a need or a want or a desire for something on a project, I could speak about it, not just from the features and benefits of the product as a salesperson would, but I could speak about it as far as how it is actually going to solve their problems. I would take time to sit on the job sites and learn from the job foreman, and ask them why they were doing things a certain way, and why this way and not that way, and sit on the ridge line. Different folks are responsible for my learning and understanding better the industry I was in and the profession that I had taken on.

Becoming A Constant Seeker Of New Knowledge

I feel like you are definitely somebody I would call authentically curious, and you are a man of the people. I see how you interact with your team at Exterior Medics. I see how you interact with customers. I see how you interact with possible referring partners. You are always seeking. You are a seeker of knowledge. Where do you think this seeking comes from? Is that how you prefer to learn? How does that serve you in day-to-day business? Of course, you said it gets you to be able to speak the language. It gets you closer to the customer, but talk to me about your seeking.

It just comes from an understanding and a comfort with knowing that there is always more to know and always more to learn. I never feel like I have got the answer. It’s always like there is something else. There is something else. I do have that curiosity, and I enjoy learning from others’ experiences, and and and gleaming from that knowledge. I have been really fortunate. Present company included.

When we were part of a BNI chapter, there were folks that I would just listen to, I am like, the way that they speak, how do they present themselves so confidently? How did they learn how to do that? I would just sit with them and talk with them, talk with you, and learn about how you do these, how do you do that? How do you speak this way? How do you present yourself so confidently? That’s just one example.

In business, it was not about working with and meeting other people in the construction industry, though that was also important, but all walks of business. I am always fascinated and enjoy learning from others and really trying to understand people more than anything else, and what’s behind the person, what’s behind the business that they’re in. I do not know. I have just always had that fascination with the human story and what makes people people, if that makes sense.

That’s where we have a kinship for sure. We have got a lot of things that I believe we’re kindred souls in, but the knowing of people at a level that is beyond surface has been a through line in our relationship, as far as how we operate in business. How do we then go take coffee and talk to each other about just life in general? It has always been a fascination of mine to know you in that vein.

I am going to back up for one second because, talking about you being a seeker, and you were saying, “When it came to your mentors, you had your sales managers, and you had people that you were associated with, but you also talked about going in, and you had books, and you had things on tape.” You said even before that, I am going back one more step. You said that you do not know if you would have done anything differently when you were younger because you do not know if it’s because you did not know anything, sometimes just not knowing is a good thing. You’re right.

As you layer in the levels of responsibility as we age, it’s like the skin in the game gets a little bit deeper. You’re like, now what’s at stake? I find that interesting because speaking of books, speaking of being a seeker, speaking of which you ended up giving me this book, and I was in my 40s, and I was trying to decide if I was going to be an entrepreneur yet again. Your advice to me in my forties was like, “What do you do with that idea?”

For the people who do not know this book, what do you want to do with an idea? You have to get it. It’s such a beautiful book. I love the fact that Mark gave me this children’s book because, first of all, the illustrations are gorgeous. Sometimes, when you’re drowning in considerations for somebody like Mark, who’s a mentor to me, to then say, “I’m just going to give you something so simple to think about.”

Your advice to me was through this children’s book. I did have a lot on the line, but you’re like, “No, I still want you to go for it. I still want you to pursue your dream.” I do not know. I feel like maybe I was duped by this guy because he was like, no, I do not know. There was a lot on the line. Any thoughts on like, why did you give me that book back then? What were you thinking at the time?

It’s because, as we were saying, we enjoy connecting and truly understanding people’s stories and seeing, and I think a gift that I have that you have is that you see this potential. You see potential in others, and you have a belief in others, and maybe a belief that sometimes they do not quite have themselves yet. Maybe it’s not as strong as it could or should be. Whether that’s what I saw in the time when I recommended that book or not, I do not know. When I picked up that book for the first time, and I picked it up for my children, I had three amazing girls, and I picked it up for them and I read it.

I remember it being just profound. This feels like when I read this book. As you said, it is written and meant to be for children, but I believe it’s for anybody. Again, it speaks to what I have said earlier. When you asked me about it, and to the point you’re making, would you do anything different? I hope not. Again, as it speaks to in that book, you have these ideas, you have these dreams, these ambitions, these desires. If you allow it to the world, or certain people within the world will tell you that your ideas are no good, that they’re you know, that you’re not smart enough, you’re not this.

Again, a lot of times it’s your own inner voice. I’ve had that truck, I’ve had that struggle. You talk about imposter syndrome. I have struggled with it. I still have it, but I have the ability now to comment and not allow it to take force and take power over me. When you’re 40 years old, and you have got this idea, but then you have also got the weight of like, “I was this high-powered executive, and I was going all over the country, and I did this, and I did that.” Now we have got this little idea, and who knows who.

Maybe it’s not good. You put the idea away, and you put it in the corner. It just sits there. At the time that we were talking, and what I believe that I try to do with my own team, with my children, with folks that are outside of the organization, is that if I see something, feel like it’s my opportunity to say, there’s something there. Why not do it? Give that nudge.

Give that opportunity or share that belief in somebody that say, “No, you have got an idea that can be something powerful there.“ We all need just a little bit more of that encouragement at times. There are too many things, I think again in life that tell us, “No, you do not. Just stop it, stop dreaming, go on.” It just really takes the love and the joy out of what we do in life. Those opportunities that we get to push back and say, no, go for it. It’s what I look for.

I’m so grateful that you and I are friends. I’m so grateful that you gave me this book because it sits in my office front and center. As an entrepreneur, there are many times when you just think, “What have I done? Like basically a kick in the head and going back to this book and recognizing that sometimes we take our ideas and we protect them like a little egg. We want to put this little egg on a shelf, and we do not want anybody to hurt the little egg.

We do not want our ideas to be blasted. We do everything to protect it, but in that protection, as opposed to in this advancement of the potential, as you said, we’re probably doing more harm than good. You taught me that, and I will forever be grateful for the fact that you did something so simple, so easy, but it is a daily reminder in my life of not only you, but what potential exists, and that Mark Watson believes that there is potential in this idea. I got to keep going. I just wanted to say thank you for that.

That’s amazing. Thank you, Tina.

Shaping A Healthy Culture At Exterior Medics

You hire a lot of people. How big is Exterior Medics these days?

As far as head count?

Yeah.

About 55 to 56 people in that 50 to 60 realm, depending on seasonality, but not less than 50 these days and approaching 60.

What I love about your company is that it is not Amazon. It is not the size of Amazon. We do not have thousands of people in an international market, but I often tell students that there are big companies that come to recruit on these college campuses. The reason why they come to recruit is that they have the bandwidth to do so. You have to be aware of these smaller companies that exist, that are 50, 60, 100 people, or even 5, 10 people. I was talking to Dawn McGruder. Another friend of ours runs a beautiful CPA business.

She’s always competing against bigger accounting firms for these students because she just does not have the bandwidth to send people from her office to sit in a career fair at various college campuses. At the same time, she is growing, and she needs to hire talent. You guys have this amazing company. One of the things I always loved is that I love seeing your posts about how you would have these picnics, and you would have these crazy games that you would play with all of your employees at these picnics, and all the families were invited. It is just a different sense of business. Talk to me a little bit about your values and how you all operate as a company at Exterior Medics.

I appreciate you mentioning that and acknowledging it. We win on culture. That’s the not-so-secret sauce around here.

Is that we win on culture?

As Peter Drucker says, culture is each strategy for breakfast. It’s something that, for us, to your point, we cannot compete with the Amazons and the other large corporations of the world, and the folks that can come in here and offer. What I would suggest is that we offer extremely fair compensation and healthy compensation packages, do not get me wrong. When you’re comparing to these behemoths, there’s just no way to compete on that.

I would suggest that, with the same token, it’s hard for them to compete in our culture, because it is very much a team dynamic here. We operate with integrity. We lead with core values, and we really pour into people. That’s one of the passions that I have. Thankfully, the other leaders within the organization are really pouring into and building people. We say when we’re hiring, when I am interviewing anybody, and this is also with our other hiring managers now, we say, “You help us grow, you will grow with us.” That’s our promise to you. It’s something that I can promise you.

I said from day one, the first person that we hired, I said that too. I meant it, and I believe it there because there is no worse feeling than believing that you’re contributing to something that does not contribute back or does not give you something back. It’s not about the most money, it’s not about anything else, but it’s actually, so when we talk about growing with us, it is helping people giving them an opportunity to when folks are able to buy their first home.

When they start a family and when they start a family and they need a little bit more time or grace in terms of their leave, we’re able to give them that, and we’re able to pour into them in different ways. They want to educate themselves. They want to learn a new skill, and we can offer them some assistance to do that. We have a tuition program here that we have, where we help people further educate and chase not necessarily something that directly results or impacts their job today, but it’s something that they have an interest in that could help them grow themselves as an individual.

That’s our culture here, that it’s just really truly pouring into people. It goes back to, if you want to talk about the book, something else you see potential in people, you see the opportunity there. When they see it, when they come here and join us under that promise that they’re going to grow with us, it’s like we need to do everything we can to be part of their growth and part of their journey. That’s what we have here.

This is such an important point that I need to sit on for a second because sometimes the currency is not necessary currency. What you just described is the currency of the culture, and how you are pouring into people in the way that they’re pouring back into you. I know some of your employees, I’m thinking of two in particular, who started their families, as you mentioned, she got the job off.

She absolutely loves working for you guys, and she has grown so much in her role. Of course, Steve, who has now built his dream home on a mountain, and he is absolutely thrilled with the trajectory of his career path and being partnered with you guys. The fact that there are companies out there that I think people should look at, and who are the leaders. What is the culture?

What other currency is being offered other than the currency? Statistics show that 50% of people leave a job because of their leadership. It’s because of their direct manager. You all have always created this secret sauce. I have watched you over a decade, not only grow as far as the physical makeup in your building and your team size and the amount of revenue you all bring in, but I have watched you all grow as a family at Exterior Medics, and that is such a rare thing. Congratulations on that.

Thank you.

Balancing Business And Family Responsibilities

You hire for potential, you bring people up with you, and I have also known you to not only be an extraordinary leader in your business, but you’ve got this beautiful picture of kids that are no longer that age, but you’ve got your three girls who are now a little bit older. That has been another through line in your life is that you are somebody who does not sacrifice family. As a matter of fact, going back to your origin story, when you and Joe were trying to contemplate, “We do not want to have to be all over the place. We want to control quality, and we want to do it here, and we want to focus on family.” Talk about the importance of family for you.

I’ll try to do it while keeping the tears because I do not have tissues close enough. I am a sap at the end of the day. Mandy, my wife, and my three girls, Kara, Evelyn, and Lila, are everything. They are the inspiration that I hold now. They are what are on the tough days, when you need a little bit extra. They’re my drive.

They’re the fire inside of me, making sure that I am doing everything I can, not to earn more money or have more success in that way, but just to hopefully be an example of what a leader should look like, what a father should look like, what a man should look like in their life. The fact that I have three girls, hopefully, gives them a resemblance to what they look forward to as far as a character standpoint. It’s all of those things. They are absolutely the big why. The North Star is what guides me through any tough moment.

The last time we had coffee, it was Friday afternoon and you were, we had lunch and you were getting ready to, on top of your busy schedule, you’re getting ready to drive four hours to Pittsburgh to go to a tournament. How did Kara do?

They did well. They went five and one that weekend. They had a great tournament, and they beat a couple of really good teams that, on paper, were thinking there was no chance that they were going to beat them. That’s why they play the game. They had a great tournament and played really well, played their butts off, really tough. They’re doing fantastic.

It’s important that, in my first career, when I was in med tech, I was primarily surrounded by men. A lot of women in business have felt like they’ve needed to take time out of work in order to raise a family. What I found when I was working with all these men is that they were really struggling with the, back then, we called it work-life balance. I do not know if we all believe in a true balance. Sometimes it’s higher here and sometimes a little bit higher here.

Securing Business Growth Through The Right Partnerships

They were really struggling with the balance of how to be a good person at work and be a good employee to my company, and how to be a good family man at the same time. You have definitely held the line on that. Now we move forward to the fact that you and Joe have built this amazing company. All had a lot of eyeballs on you, and you had a lot of people knocking on the door saying, “We like the culture that you’ve built. We like the trajectory of where you all are growing.”

“We want to talk to you about partnering with you. If you can bridge us from the fact that you are now partnered with the firm.” In that partnership, there are new requests, but at the same time, you have always kept strong on this. There are certain things that I will not erode. Those things are your ability to spend time with your family. They’re going to be going to college at some point.

Speak about that. Again, speak about the non-negotiables, and I’ll work backwards to the partnership and talk about that. That is absolutely non-negotiable. I am a father, a husband first, and that’s it. There cannot be anything. That’s not just speaking out, really, to other people. That’s a conversation I have to have with myself or have had to have with myself at times. Just to make sure that you have to check yourself every now and again, “Is this going to get in the way of if I am a husband and father first, making this decision, doing this thing, what does it do there? Does it make me better in that circumstance? Does it work?”

Sometimes it can be a net neutral proposition. What it cannot do is make me a worse one of those things. I can look at opportunities that way that might come my way. Looking at business that way is that it does not mean that there is no sacrifice. It does not mean that there are no long days. There are times when I wish I were able to be home sooner, and I wasn’t. I had to work late, or I come home stressed, whatever it may be.

At the end of the day, for the long haul, I have to have the belief and conviction that whatever I am doing is for the betterment of them, my wife, and my children. Everything else will take its toll. It’ll work itself out. So far so good. It has played out. To talk about the partnership, you’re right. It’s especially in home services. It’s uncommon. It’s a really hot space now for private equity groups to come in and other larger organizations, platform organizations that are building.

A few years back now, more than that, I was fielding emails and phone calls and mailings and everything else from so many different groups that were knocking on the door and saying, “Maybe we can partner together. Maybe we can help you on your exit or whatever it may be.” Over a course of time, there was more curiosity that we had around learning what that might look like. Again, it goes back to culture. We knew what it could not look like.

It could not look like we were going to make a choice if we were to partner with somebody, that the fabric of what it meant to be at Exterior Medics or meant to be an Exterior Medics team member was ripped apart. We did look at it, and we decided beyond legacy for the life of the organization to truly live beyond myself, beyond my partner Joe, and be bigger than us. That partnering seemed to make more sense.

That we did not want this, this was not a lifestyle business, it was not a legacy business, it was not a business that we were going to just have to or desire to pass on to our children. Not that there’s anything wrong with that if that’s your business. We wanted to be a business that transcended time and lived well beyond our years. We felt like partnering with the right group would make that happen. We spoke to a lot of folks. We got really serious. Investment bankers, business advisors, and CPAs.

I remembered that you opted to bet on yourself and go the route of work. You built this business. When you were going through this process, it was better than an MBA.

I did not, yeah. I joked, because as we highlighted at the beginning of our conversation, I dropped out of school. I did not have the same college debt that a lot of folks have or these college tuition bills. I certainly paid for it on the back end. That was my education. I spent a lot of money with a lot of great people to ensure that we were putting ourselves and our company and our people in the best hands possible. That’s what it really came down to. When we were looking, we knew what we wanted to look for in a partner, and the partner that we found in IHS, Infinity Home Services, was a partner that valued the same things that we did.

Again, it is going to sound like a broken record here, but I promise you, God’s honest truth, it is all about culture. That is why we made the decision we did. There may be some people in the audience who believe that it does not exist. Once you talk about private equity money or partnering and selling your organization or being acquired or merging with the company, but it can, and it does exist out there. There are certainly a lot of horror stories.

There are a lot of folks that are out there for the wrong reasons, but there are some good people out there that are out there for the right reasons. When we met with IHS, we met with the founder, Josh Sparks. He spoke to us in our first meeting about integrity, about hard work, about service, and about what it meant to build an enduring great company. That was different from a lot of the other folks that we spoke to. Again, bigger than the paycheck that was being promised to us for partnering with this company. Was it more about what we are going to do? What does it look like for the people?

Also, something that we wanted to maintain to be a part of because there is a lot left in the tank here. I feel like there’s a lot more to contribute. There’s a lot more work to be done by myself, on myself. I wanted to make sure that we were partnering with somebody that not only was good for us in the short term, but certainly for the long term in terms of our people, and able to continue on this journey. Just doing it at a greater capacity, having folks behind us that we’re going to just be able to pour rocket fuel on this machine. Again, the good work that we’re doing and we were doing at the time could just be done tenfold.

Treating Success As A Journey, Not A Destination

I love the trajectory. I cannot wait to see where you guys go because I know that the right people have been doing the right things by other people to build a business. It is a business in exteriors. There are businesses that people try to market as sexy, but I find that the way in which you all treat your people, your customers, your families, yourselves, to be of the highest honor for everybody involved. The one commonality, and we can close on this because the through line is culture. That’s what we’ve learned today. You have built a culture that is very impressive.

A lot of people are thinking, but I’m not in charge of a company. I did not build a company. I’m not in charge of the culture of my company. Let’s bring it down to something that I think more people can understand. You can help us with this. You can help me with this. If we were to take culture as a concept and we were to take that to the individual level, I now turn this into what I call defining, what is your definition of success? Defining that for yourself. You and Joe collectively defined what you wanted as your culture, which in essence is this is a no-go, or this is a go for us, because this is what we feel is winning.

You and I have talked numbers, and never have we mentioned a number in this entire conversation, by the way. I just want people to notice that nobody has mentioned a number. We have mentioned a feeling, and we have mentioned what it takes in order to make sure that it exists, and identifying potential and investing in people. By doing that, they more than exceeded numbers. I can promise the audience that Exterior Medics has more than exceeded numbers.

That is why Mark and Joe were fielding all of these phone calls from all of these different companies, because they met the numbers, but they met the numbers because they knew their compass. They knew their North Star. They had their definition of success. They agreed upon it, and they held to it. What would you say to people who are struggling with their definition of success? How can you help them build that for themselves?

Success is a journey, not a destination. What we all should be doing every day is looking to make ourselves and those around us just a little bit better.

You said that at the beginning.

It really is, but I believe it. It’s at the heart of it, when I wake up in the morning, I want to end the day a better version of myself. I want you to be a better version of yourself. I want my family to be a better version of themselves. I want my company to be a little bit better today than they were yesterday. It is truly believed that it is not a destination that I believe that I will always be on the journey. I will never arrive is a feeling that I think everyone should really take to heart. Sometimes we’re reaching for things, and then we get there, and then we’re like, “Is this it?”

Going back to even what you had mentioned earlier, as far as with me, that curiosity or the seeking to understand it’s because I always believe there’s just something more. There’s something more I could have been doing. I could have been a little bit better. It’s not about being dissatisfied or not thankful or grateful for the success that you have and the things that you’ve achieved, and you could be happy, and you should be, and just really full of love and joy in life.

I want all of this for everybody. There are more things. There are always more things that you can have. There’s always more money that you can make. It’s like, “No, I’ve made an impact, but I continue to make an impact.” I can make a greater impact. Again, there is nothing more rewarding than taking that opportunity when you pour into people to see them realize their potential and see that carried forward.

That’s like the big dream of mine is to make an impact on individuals that will make an impact on individuals tomorrow, that one day will make great seismic waves that I will never know about. They will be out there, and they’ll be changing the world for a better place. I do not think it’s just a dream. It’s a reality that we can live with and just make a little bit better.

Discussion Wrap-up And Closing Words

I love that. Mark Watson with Exterior Medics, if anybody does not know, I talk often about quantum giving, and what Mark just described is making these seismic waves of impact on people’s potential that go beyond him. That is quantum giving at its best, and Mark’s living it as a leader. I’m so grateful to have you as a friend, as a mentor, as a guest on this show.

Thank you for sharing a little bit about your journey and knowing that it’s not the destination, that it continues to be the journey. I’m looking forward to staying on this journey with you, continuing our friendship, seeing where you go, and seeing all the people that you impact. People, if you do not follow Mark Watson, follow him because he is definitely one to watch. I know that I’m just very fortunate. Mark, thank you for taking the time.

Thanks for the opportunity. I appreciate you so much, Tina. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Important Links

• Mark Watson on LinkedIn
• Exterior Medics
• Exterior Medics on Instagram
• Exterior Medics on Facebook

About Mark Watson

Brett Danielson is the CEO and Co-Founder of BarTrack, a hospitality technology company focused on transforming draft beverage operations through data, automation, and real-time visibility. With a background rooted in both hospitality and startup execution, Brett has built his career at the intersection of operations, technology, and scalable growth. As CEO, Brett leads overall company strategy, product vision, and go-to-market execution. He has driven BarTrack from concept to a rapidly scaling platform used by leading operators, distributors, and global beverage brands. Under his leadership, the company has developed a data-driven ecosystem that improves draft quality, reduces waste, and unlocks measurable profitability for hospitality operators.

Brett has been instrumental in building a category-defining solution for draft beverage management, integrating hardware, software, and analytics into a seamless platform. With a hands-on approach to leadership, Brett has built and scaled core functions across product, sales, and customer success. He has led early-stage growth initiatives, strategic partnerships, and pilot programs with enterprise customers, turning operational insights into scalable business solutions.

Brett has been recognized as a Washington Business Journal 40 Under 40 honoree in 2025 for his leadership and impact in the region’s startup and hospitality ecosystem. He also serves on the Board of Advisors for the Gilliam Center for Entrepreneurship at his alma mater James Madison University, supporting the next generation of founders and innovation in the hospitality and technology sectors.