Hi. My name is Marc Hendrikson. When I’m not fostering children and raising a large family, I’m listening to John Garrett on the Green Apple Podcast.

John: Hello. This is John Garrett and welcome to Episode 131 of the Green Apple Podcast where each Wednesday, I interview a professional just like me is known for a hobby or a passion outside of work making them stand out like a green apple in a boring red apple world. I’m always so fascinated how we usually try to stand out with our technical expertise. I’m here to shine a light each week on someone who understands that expertise isn’t always earned in degrees and certifications. Sometimes it’s experiences from your passions outside of work that actually make you better at your job. It’s because time is the only resource that you can’t make more of, making at the most precious. So what we do with our time outside of work in our free time is a much better indicator of who we truly are and what actually drives us.

And really, really quickly before I get into the episode, I’m doing some research. It’s a super short one minute anonymous survey about firm, culture and how the green apple message might apply in your corporate world. If you got just 60 seconds, please go to greenapplepodcast.com. Click the big green button there, answer a few quick questions. Again, it’s totally anonymous and I really, really appreciate the help. Thank you so much to everyone for subscribing to the show so you don’t miss any of the cool guests I have every single week like this week’s Marc Hendrikson. He’s a Senior Vice President Commercial Banking at Colorado Business Bank in Denver. He’s also the Board Director and Instructor at the Center for Financials Training and the treasurer in Finance Committee Chair of The Adoption Exchange.

Wow, Marc. You’re a crazy busy guy. I’m so lucky to have you today with me on the Green Apple Podcast.

Marc: Nice to be here, John.

John: This is exciting. I gave everyone a little bit of an introduction but maybe in your own words, where you’re at now and a little bit of how you got here.

Marc: I’m a career banker. So I’ve only worked for banks my entire career. I started out on the accounting finance side of life which is how I started down that road whatever of becoming CPA and quickly found that I had other interests to include people and migrated into the lending space about 20 years ago and have never really looked back.

John: Wow. That’s awesome. What made you want to get into accounting? That’s a question I love to ask everyone.

Marc: I did not decide in high school or even in my early 20’s that I want to be an accountant and I didn’t go to college right away either. I had been an exchange student. I had learned a foreign language. I had done some really cool things but I just didn’t know what I wanted to do. In the mid-’80s, the economy specifically in Colorado was so bad. There were no jobs. It was a tough few years. I was doing entry level work working for blue collar manufacturing and small companies here in Denver. A bank just seemed like a cool place to work.

John: Right. That’s where all the money is, right?

Marc: Totally. So I kept applying for these teller positions and the economy was so bad and so many people were applying. I literally had to take a class to learn how to be a teller.

John: Wow.

Marc: I took this three-week class to become a teller, became a teller and decided that hey, this numbers thing like make sense and I could really help people balance their checkbooks. I really get this. And so I went back to school and accounting was my very first class and loved it and took off from there. The funny part is again back to the economy and I wasn’t that typical 22 year old with a four-year degree. So all the CPA firms were like, yeah, you don’t fit the mold. You can’t be an auditor. I just stayed in banking, became an accountant and then moved up kind of the ranks in the finance department. I had a lot of fun working with pretty large departments in a big bank and managing budgets and stuff like that but it was all people-oriented. We were talking about customers and connections to people was always there.

John: Yeah. That’s awesome. You’ve been breaking the stereotype since the beginning. Good for you, man.

Marc: Totally.

John: Yeah, and obviously successful. So it can be done. That’s the thing. That’s the message that we’re trying to spread on the Green Apple Podcast. And so I mean just right out the gate, you are swinging. That’s awesome.

Marc: You know, it’s funny when I speak to millennial groups or just even professional groups with specifically younger groups of people. I always tell them that I’m a Gen Xer and we were the original breakthrough rules, MTV group. I literally would be, I remember being in the accounts payable department at a bank and I’d be away from my desk. And my boss would be like, “What are you doing?” I’m like, “Well, my work is done. I’m upstairs talking to people in the corporate group.”

John: Right. Yeah. Maybe you should just manage me better. That’s what it sounds like.

Marc: It was funny. So I was nicknamed Deep Throat because if anybody wanted to know what was going on in the company, I have the scoop.

John: Right. You’re the scoop. That’s so funny. I actually had a manager, my last manager that I had. I think I drove him insane because he was one of those that would give you work and then hover and kind of circle and I become a five-year old child. So I would have espn.com’s website on my computer, minimize, doing my work. Whenever I would see him coming, I would bring it up on my screen, the exact opposite of what everyone would do.

Marc: Awesome.

John: Every single time he came by, I was reading ESPN and then I would always have my work done way before time and he was so confused as to how are you doing this? What’s going on? Maybe you should worry about it and just be a better manager. How does that sound?

Marc: Yeah, totally.

John: But, yeah. That’s awesome, man. Well, I know that being a senior vice president keeps you busy. But when you do have some free time, what kind of hobbies, passions do you love to do?

Marc: Let me back up a little bit in my career path. I remember sitting with an executive at the bank and we’re covering her quarterly numbers. She looks at me and she says, “What are you doing. Marc?” And I said, “What do you mean what am I doing? We’re going through your numbers and talking about your forecast.” She’s like, “No. What are you doing in the accounting department? You have such good people skills. You need to join the sales side of the bank.”

John: Oh, wow.

Marc: And so that’s what transitioned me into becoming a banker, a true banker where I’m working with clients and selling the bank services and managing and maintaining relationships. To that point, I’m also not typical in the banker side because I have this whole accounting and finance background and I’m a CPA as well. I’m not your typical guy. Your typical banker is usually a white male sports enthusiast. Although I’m white male, I’m not a sports enthusiast. I watch passively but I’m not a super sports geek. That’s not one of my passions but I am a Colorado native. I love being outdoors. So camping, hiking, cross-country skiing. But really, when I answer this question usually for people, I don’t really have a lot of hobbies. I golf occasionally but I have six children. Although I don’t know that’s a passion. Sometimes that’s a sentence.

John: Hopefully they’re not listening.

Marc: I say it in front of them all the time.

John: Oh, good.

Marc: My children are open about it. So my point with that is that’s really what has overshadowed in a good way and really created this whole journey that I never expected to experience through the foster care system and adopting for children. I have two grown children, so I only have four at home now. But that created this crazy passion if you will. Although largely my wife, she wanted to expand our family and she was really the driving force behind this. Obviously, I supported it and went along with it. What is done for me and how it created a whole new me I think is just a cool thing.

John: Yeah. How does someone get into that?

Marc: You know, it’s funny because that story I always tell is when my wife first brought up, we had two children, difficult pregnancies. Having more was not really an option not without spending a whole lot of money and just doing other things. Adoption kind of scared me so I wasn’t interested in that. My wife brought to my attention that there’s these international adoptions, they seem pretty streamlined. You get the baby. You’re done. It’s not the horror stories you read about here in the states where kids go back and stuff. My first response was, if you can figure it all out, I’ll get behind you because I’m kind of the guy that figures everything out at home even. And so I didn’t think she’d ever do it. Well, that was my first mistake. So all of a sudden I had a mountain of paperwork in front of me and we were on a plane a couple months later to Guatemala.

John: That’s fantastic, man. Wow. Good for you.

Marc: So that’s how it started. And we wanted a little girl which was really cool because we could choose that. So we brought home a little girl and everything was going well. Our boys were seven and ten at the time and a little girl. And then it became kind of obvious that as she hit say one or two that gosh, do we really want her to grow up alone? But do we really want to go through another foreign adoption? They’re very expensive and some of these countries are unsafe and one third world experience was enough for me. I’m not that adventurous. Again, back to how you end up doing this with some friends in our faith, in our church had been fostering through Denver County and they always had babies. You always hear well, you can’t get babies. You have to have older children. She kept telling us that the need was just way greater than anyone knows and that we should look into it. So again, you would think I’d learn the first time the mistake of saying well, if you can figure this out —

John: Right. Famous last words.

Marc: Yeah. Although that did take quite a bit longer. It was a year. It takes a year to get certified and really up to speed. A year later, we were bringing home a newborn from Denver General Hospital.

John: Wow. From right here.

Marc: From right here. The next seven years, we spent fostering multiple children with the goal of keeping one that turned into now three more, so four total. That’s a long story that we don’t have time to go into.

John: Yeah. That’s great, man.

Marc: But once you’re in really, the point I’m making is like it’s hard to get out because the need is just unbelievable.

John: Yeah. That’s so impressive and it makes such a huge difference. It’s probably even hard to say but some of the more rewarding experiences that you have gotten out of this are unique stories I guess.

Marc: Yeah. Here is what this has done for me. In addition to the fact that we have four healthy thriving children that would have had a difficult life even here in the States, there’s a lot of bad stuff that happens and it’s not the stuff you read about. It’s not these horrific cases abuse. It’s usually just neglect and poverty and not getting an opportunity to live a full life. That’s what happens a lot and these aren’t immigrant kids. These are kids born here that just do not lead good lives because parents have themselves either been in the foster care system or didn’t have good examples, whatever.

Really, what I’ve taken away from all of this in the downturn was a big part of this. In the midst of the crisis from 2008 and really had hit Colorado late. So 12, 13, 14 were tough years for a lot of my clients. Tough years for me personally. We had some kids coming in and out. We had one child that left that we didn’t think was going to leave. So that was very, very difficult from birth to six months, goes back to mom, mom’s not capable of handling it, she ends up coming back, has had some trauma in the intervening period and then I have all the stress at work.

What all of that taught me, when I would come home to children who needed me and would greet me at the garage door or whatever the case may be, work just didn’t matter. It literally was they don’t care what crazy stress I’ve dealt with or the fact that I’ve been in bankruptcy court that day, or I’ve got all kinds of stressful situations that clients are going through. As the banker, we hold the strings a lot of times unfortunately, the purse strings. They didn’t care. And so my whole point with this is that it really taught me to separate work from home. They need what they need especially some of these kids that had high emotional or even physical sensory needs. They need to be touched, they need to be held, they need to be whatever meltdowns they’re having. Whatever your issues are, they are really second. They’re not second, they’re tenth. They don’t even matter.

John: Yeah. The feelings that you have from work or the frustrations or the whatever, yeah, you really have to check them at the door because the needs of these kids are so much greater than whatever you thought which is kind of interesting because it puts it in perspective as to where you were like, wow, I really thought my day was bad. And then you come home, you’re like, oh, my goodness. The needs of these kids just dwarfs anything that I was feeling. And so did you really need to check that and be there for them and be present? that’s really profound, man.

Marc: Pretty much so. With our older boys, our biological kids, I was going to school at night. I was working full time. I wasn’t as engaged and I missed a lot as a result of that. They’re healthy productive adults and everything is good but I wasn’t as engaged. And so I got this second chance with this second group of kids. The other thing is to keep my wife from going insane because she was dealing with stress. With foster kids, you have appointments and you have all these things that you have to do and you have to document things. There’s a lot of work. It’s not like just having kids and you got social workers coming in and out of our lives. At one point, we had three counties. We were dealing literally with three different counties.

John: Oh, my goodness.

Marc: So that’s six caseworkers and all the things that go with that and then there’s training. I had CPE as an accountant and then I have ongoing — I was in a classroom all the time.

John: Yeah, exactly. That’s all there is. Can we just do this in the same classrooms?

Marc: Literally. I remember being on vacation and there’s this annual certification process and we were behind. We’re on a plane flying to Hawaii for this phenomenal trip and I’m literally reading. I’m doing my foster care education updates.

John: Homework, right.

Marc: Homework, yes. It’s awful.

John: It’s awesome. That’s so funny, man. That’s so funny. But that’s really, really interesting though and I love how you said how you got kind of a second chance with the foster care kids. Why do you think it is that so many people and I mean you experienced it yourself fall into that trap of work, work, work, schools, school, school, education like why do you think that we fall into that trap so much? We’re clearly, you’re proving that you can do it the other way and it’s probably even more rewarding the other way but that’s not our natural default.

Marc: I don’t have a good answer that but I will say that I believe very strongly and you and I talked about this and it’s part of your message and I’m just a thousand percent behind it. When you separate and you can keep those things in their compartments if you will, you’re actually better. You’re better at work, you’re more focused, you’re not going to be. So I think sometimes people are working to either get away from maybe what they don’t want to deal with, the uncomfortable side of maybe family life or relationships or they were not in a relationship so they just work all the time or they work all the time, therefore there can’t be — I don’t know. I don’t know what the answer is.

John: Yeah. That’s what pays the bills maybe.

Marc: Yeah, that too.

John: Or that’s all we’ve known because education and as well, you work. It’s like well, but if you don’t have to. By separate, I think you mean when you’re in the moment, be in the moment. Don’t be daydreaming or what have you. But I guess that leads to my next thought is just is, is the foster care something you talk about at work? Do you ever bring that to work stories wise or does it ever come up?

Marc: Back to my early experiences, just as a human being, I remember when I first started, I always did well in school but I remember the one point that they would always bring out to my parents was Marc talks too much.

John: You were good graces because me too, man. Me too.

Marc: I just love people. I’m totally an open book. The reality is as my wife would say and we share a Facebook account which I always tell her she can create her own. I share way too much. But part of that was I had some crazy stuff going on during those years with these kids and just in even my own life. It was like therapy. I like coming to work and with my clients sharing my experience, they loved it. So again back to not being that typical golf sports playing, sports enthusiast banker, I am so unique and the clients that I’ve known for many years know my whole story and love it. When I walk in the door, it’s never how’s the bank or how’s life or how’s — it’s always how are the kids, how are things, any new ones? No, we’re done now.

John: Yeah, right. But still, clearly I would have to believe that that benefited your career and benefited business in a huge way.

Marc: In 2012, I was on the board of the Colorado Society of CPAs and I was asked to be the vice chair which means that you come in as chair. It’s like a five-year commitment because there’s all this stuff that goes on nationally behind the scenes with the AICPA. And I remember that year, we were still in the middle of all this fostering. We had a couple of adoptions pending and my first story was not about the profession but was about me and our whole family was on the cover of the magazine.

John: Nice, yeah.

Marc: Now, when I go to networking events, it’s never oh, I remember when you were chair, you did all these really great things for the profession. It’s like, oh, I remember your story about your family.

John: Right. Because I mean that’s the thing. It’s weird how our brains work like that but it’s the pattern interrupt or the thing that’s unique and it’s the thing that’s really who you are. The accounting and the banking is what’s on the business card but really who you really are because this is what you’re doing with your free time which is so, so valuable. You could do anything, literally anything and that’s what you choose to do. I really believe that that’s what’s at your core. By sharing that with people and showing them that, they just lock on right away and it’s also something that’s unique and something that — I just love to hear how people want to know more and want to ask you questions about it which is great because I’m sure you’d much rather talk about that than the financials you’re bringing in or whatever sort of banking information that you talk with, with everyone. Yeah, it’s cool.

Marc: It is and I and I look at my clients, the ones who are very successful financially. Yes obviously, money is important. We are all bottom line focused. I am as a CPA and as a banker.

John: Sure. Yeah.

Marc: But it’s still about the people. What does that end up doing? Does it benefit their families? Does it benefit their employees? Does it benefit their communities? The companies that I work with that are doing things outside of just making money and the banks like the one I work for who are supporting non-profits and one of the other things that I’m involved with, now I was recently appointed the board. I’m the finance chair of The Adoption Exchange.

John: Oh, nice.

Marc: What a great connection. So yes, I bring a banking and CPA hat where we’ve got lots of goals. We have money issues. We’re trying to manage all these things but there’s the human side. I have lived through the system. I know how it works. My point with all that is, the same thing with my clients, clients that are more focused on doing things outside of just running their companies and making money I believe are more successful because they’re well-rounded people.

John: Right, because they are doing things for a bigger reason or for a bigger cause or they’re more willing to share and be open about that. Then it makes going to work more fun. It makes going to work more exciting. Therefore, you’re going to be more successful because you’re just firing on all cylinders. It’s not like you have to go to work. It’s not the sentence if you will. I know, I know, you were teasing. But yeah, so I guess before you got into the foster care world early on in your career, were you sharing something else or was it just kind of getting to know people and just talking and being anywhere except for at your desk.

Marc: Yeah, definitely.

John: It means that you’re winning. That’s exactly what that means.

Marc: Yeah, sitting was definitely a challenge for me and has always been.

John: Right, sure. And it was way before the standing desks.

Marc: Yeah. And go to school at night and managing 18-hour days was really hard but you know, I will say that I was a lot less interesting. Back in the day when I was truly kind of a number cruncher in a cube doing my work, I was kind of that typical CPA just trying to get ahead, figure out, get that degree behind me, move up and so on and so forth. I would say that well, I always had his people side to me. I’ve probably in the last 10, 15 years blossomed way beyond anything I would have ever been with that 2.3 three kid family.

John: Yeah. I guess that’s the thing that always intrigues me because I, I guess fell into that read a little bit but I think on accident didn’t. I didn’t know what I was doing. People would say, so what did you do this weekend? Well, I drove to Louisville and did a comedy show. Before you know it, its wildfire. Everybody knows type of a thing. That’s what’s so weird too is our profession is so gray if you will.

Marc: Absolutely.

John: That even just a little bit of light, I mean just a little bit of color, a little bit a light just is so vibrant that everybody’s going to find out about it immediately. It doesn’t even have to be something crazy exciting, just anything at all that makes you, you and have a personality. That’s what always intrigues me is why is it that we fall into that trap. I don’t know, a part of me thinks — like for me, it was like wow, I graduate college. This is my job like that they’re paying me a lot of money, more money than I’ve ever known and I guess I should really be into this type of thing because if I act like I’m not or if I act like something else, it takes any time at all than people might look at that as a weakness or frown upon the or whatever.

Marc: I think my experience was a little bit different in that. It took kind of a push from someone else who recognized that I was probably in the wrong spot. What’s interesting though, it didn’t take much. It didn’t take much of a push. I remember my first week in a lending group where I’m dealing with bankers who have outgoing personalities, they’re not behind their queues, they’re out entertaining clients and we’re dealing with all these crazy people who do crazy things both for a living as well as just personally. As a commercial banker, you get to know people really well, like everything.

John: Like too well sometimes.

Marc: Too well, yeah. I’ve been deposed for divorce cases.

John: Oh, my goodness.

Marc: Yeah, it’s crazy. Lots of stuff goes behind the scenes. Where I’m going with all that is I remember my first week back in a in a branch in a bank and someone came up to me and wanted to know where the restroom was. My first response almost was to run back to my old boss, beg him to hire me back so I could go back to my queue. I thought that. But again I guess where I’m going with this is I wasn’t like you in that sense where I kind of had this on the side and I and I love doing it. It sort of happened. And then once I found my place, loved it because I got to be out in the community, I got to go to networking events, they paid me to go talk to people and drink beer. How does that work? It was awesome.

John: That’s fantastic. I guess once you I guess start to learn about others that kind of opens the door for you to then share about yourself and vice versa that reciprocity type of a thing.

Marc: Very much so. Not that that doesn’t exist in the true depths of the accounting world but largely you’re focused on numbers. And there are people that really do that well and are not people-oriented and yes, they have interest but they don’t want to advertise those. Good, good for them and they’re still very good at what they do. That was not me.

John: Yeah absolutely. No matter what it is whether it’s, even if you play video games or you memorized every Star Trek script or whatever, I mean no matter how nerdy it is, somebody else also does that. You’re not the only one. I remember once I was at a conference and I yelled out, who has the most boring hobby here? I want to know most boring passion and somebody, a lady yelled out genealogy and another lady yelled out, genealogy, that’s not boring. I do that too. What do you know? There we go. You’re not the only one. Even if you are, I mean I was the only one. You’re probably the only one. Very few foster parents that you bump into.

Marc: Pretty unique.

John: Yeah, but still people want to know about it and that’s what they remember about you. That’s huge, that’s really huge. That’s awesome. Is there anything that you do within your team or that the bank does to encourage some of this or is it more of a tone at the top type of thing?

Marc: It’s both, it’s some of that and all of that. Banks have different cultures and different personalities. Some banks are very business-oriented and just kind of all about business. Other banks are very, and I would say community banks, smaller banks tend to want their bankers to be out in the community and not just to get business, to give back, to be on boards, to do things that are going to bring them professional growth and yeah, there’s obviously exposure in the business community. It’s all of those. Some of it is the person you work for, how much are they supportive of those things?

Interestingly, bankers are very much like accountants in that sometimes they get stuck behind their desks and they don’t get out there and they’re kind of just stuck doing their work all the time instead of keeping themselves fresh and invigorated and connected. For me, that’s just been a personal passion. I refuse to stay stuck behind my desk. I just get out there. So I’m on boards, I go to networking events even when I don’t need to and it’s just been really, really rewarding.

John: Yeah. Is that something that is able to filter down to people that are newer to the bank that see you and see that? So then they’re encouraged to do the same?

Marc: Certainly and I encourage it. When I’m mentoring, I haven’t really directly managed anyone per se in my career but when I mentor younger bankers, I’m always encouraging don’t just get stuck behind your desk taking care of your 50 clients or whatever. Get out there, meet people and when your clients have things that they’re doing, support that. If they’re involved in a nonprofit, go to those things. I very much encourage that and again I think that still somewhat comes back to the personality of I think it comes back a lot to the individual more than a company or —

John: More than the organization. Yeah, the individuals got to just step up. That’s what happened to me. Clearly, it wasn’t a firm wide endeavor at PWC at the Saint Louis Office. All right everyone, talk about your hobbies. It was just something that someone asked about at lunch and then you say it and then yeah, it’s what I do. I don’t understand why this is a problem. What’s the big deal? If you’re not breaking the law, then whatever. It’s all good that type of thing.

Marc: Yeah, I agree.

John: That’s awesome, man. Well, do you have any words of encouragement to anyone listening that might be like hey, I’m the only one who does this in my office, no one’s going to care type of thing?

Marc: I think very similar to your thoughts and I think I also will comment that I think the world is changing. We’re starting to see companies and even the accounting profession as a whole relax a little bit. There is firms here in town that wear jeans not just on Fridays but like every day.

John: That’s crazy.

Marc: It’s awesome.

John: And they still get accounting done, that’s unbelievable.

Marc: I know. There is an example where we have jean Fridays. I wear jeans every Friday even if I have appointments. My point with that is I’ll see other bankers who just can’t figure out how to put a pair of jeans on. It’s like relax. It’s okay.

John: Where there were like $200 pair of jeans?

Marc: Yeah.

John: It’s like chill out dude.

Marc: Totally.

John: Yeah. Just meet your clients where they’re at, meet your coworkers where they’re at, show a genuine interest in people and just be authentic. You’re nailing it man. That’s awesome. Well, before I go hang out with you and your family and the kids and go sledding I guess that’d be super fun.

Marc: That would be.

John: I do have my 17 rapid fire questions that I’d like to run everybody through just to make sure that we are simpatico if you will.

Marc: Awesome. I’m ready.

John: Here we go. Let me fire this thing up. All right. First one, first one all right, right out of the gate. Star Wars or Star Trek?

Marc: Star Trek.

John: Oh, nice. All right. How about when it comes to computers, are you more of a PC or a Mac?

Marc: Oh, PC totally.

John: PC, yeah. When it comes to a mouse, are you right click or left click?

Marc: I’m a left hand mouser but I don’t convert, I don’t change the —

John: Oh, wow. Okay. So you’re all kind of —

Marc: I am.

John: How about do you have a favorite cereal?

Marc: Frosted Mini-Wheats.

John: Oh, nice. Okay. It’s kind of healthy but kind of not.

Marc: Yeah, totally.

John: Yeah, I like it. That’s a good mix. How about more pens or pencils?

Marc: You know, I used to really like pencils but that goes back to reconciling statements, but I’m a pen guy now. I have my cross pen.

John: That’s nice. You got it right there in your pocket. You’re ready to go. Are you more Sudoku or crossword puzzle?

Marc: I am completely addicted to scrabble.

John: Okay, kind of crossword, scrabble, all right. How about do you have a favorite color?

Marc: Blue.

John: Blue, all right. How about a least favorite color?

Marc: Black.

John: Black, yeah. That’s a good one. Okay. This is a good one. When it comes to toilet paper, are you over or under?

Marc: Over. The whole under thing makes zero sense to me.

John: All right. How about do you have a favorite comedian?

Marc: You.

John: Me, right. You’re already on the show, man. How about a least favorite vegetable?

Marc: Lima bean.

John: Oh, that’s a solid answer.

Marc: Because my brother told me they were turtles when I was five.

John: When it comes to financials, are you more balance sheet or income statement?

Marc: I’m kind of a balance sheet guy and that is part of my banker training.

John: Right. Yeah, absolutely. How about a more suit and tie or jeans and a t-shirt?

Marc: Jeans. I’d wear jeans every day if I could.

John: Yeah. How about do you have a favorite number? As a banker, you have to have a favorite number.

Marc: Seven.

John: Seven? Why is that?

Marc: I don’t know. I just like seven.

John: It’s my favorite number too. Just always curious. How about are you more cats or dogs?

Marc: I think I like dogs better because they pay attention and don’t ignore you.

John: Right. How about more early bird or night owl?

Marc: It depends. I still wake up at 3:00 every morning because I can get up and work at 3:00 in the morning but I really prefer to be up not real early but once I’m up, I love the mornings.

John: All right, early bird, we’ll take it. Last one. The favorite thing you own or the favorite thing you have?

Marc: I have my grandfather’s violin from Germany and although I don’t really play it anymore, I love this because it was his and it was restored for me by my grandmother.

John: That’s very cool, man. Very cool. Well, thank you so much Marc, this was really, really fantastic. Thanks for being with me on the Green Apple Podcast.

Marc: Thanks John.

John: That was so, so great. I loved how Marc said, clients who are focused on more things than just making money I believe are more successful because they’re well-rounded people. This is because Marc takes the time to find what their passionate about outside of work and then celebrating that. It’s too much professionalism that’ll keep us from wanting to share these interests. Our default mode, as you heard Marc talk about was to just get the work done. In the last 10 to 15 years, he’s admitted to blossoming and it’s really benefited his career. If you like to see some pictures of Marc with his foster children and connect with them on social media, be sure to go to greenapplepodcast.com. And while you’re on the page, please click that big green button, do the anonymous research survey about corporate culture. Thanks again for subscribing to the show and for sharing this with your friends so they get the message that we’re all trying to spread which is to go out and be a green apple.