Today we’d like to introduce you to Mack Story.
Mack, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I barely graduated high school in 1987 and immediately joined the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve as an infantryman. I joke from the stage today that my nickname in high school was “007,” not because I was cool like James Bond but because that was my GPA. It wasn’t really that bad, but it wasn’t very good. Once my time at Parris Island, SC (USMC Boot Camp) and Camp Geiger, NC (USMC Infantry School) was complete, I began my blue-collar career on the front lines of a hot and dirty manufacturing plant in Montgomery, AL when I was 18.
From 1988 until 1995, I remained in an entry-level, front line position. In 1995, I decided I didn’t want to be a machine operator for the rest of my life, so I enrolled in a local community college. After nearly six years of sacrificing, I finally earned my two year associate’s degree. After taking a short break, I decided to continue and enrolled in an accelerated bachelor’s program that allowed me to complete the remaining two years of my four year degree in only one year. I was proud to earn my Executive Bachelors of Business Administration graduating with highest honors in December 2002. When I chose to become intentional about my growth, I also became determined to achieve much better results in college than I did in high school.
During the years I was attending college, I was also working full-time, a lot of overtime, and raising my son as a single parent. My intentional growth led to numerous promotions. I worked my way up to become a cell operator, a setup technician, a CNC programmer, a CAD draftsman, and then moved through several engineering positions where I was responsible for helping the sales force select and price custom products and ultimately create the bill of materials, routing information, etc. for those products when the orders arrived.
Shortly after graduating in 2003, I bet on myself and left the company where I had been for nearly 14 years.
I went across town, accepted a similar position with a different organization, and nearly doubled my income. The sacrifices I had made were finally paying off financially. A year or so later, the company began a Lean Manufacturing (process improvement) transformation initiative. I volunteered to lead it and was selected. I quickly developed a passion for leading teams, motivating, and inspiring people to work together to improve their work environment. From 2005-2008, we improved the gross profit margin at our manufacturing plant from -3% to +35%.
After achieving tremendous success, I chose to resign in August 2008 to start my own Lean Manufacturing and Leadership Development consulting firm. By April 2009, I was booked solid. 2008 was also the year I discovered professional leadership development content in the form of the well-known book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen R. Covey. At that time, no company in my 20 year manufacturing career had ever invested a single penny or a single minute in professional leadership development for me.
When it came to leadership development, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. But, I was instantly motivated and inspired to find out more.
After reading the book in 2008, I immediately started sharing what I was learning with the process improvement teams I was leading as a consultant. I also started reading leadership books daily and intend to do so the rest of my life. I have now read hundreds of leadership books, listened and watched thousands of hours of audios and videos, and attended numerous conferences.
From 2005-2012, I led leaders and their cross-functional teams through over 11,000 hours of process improvement, organizational change, and cultural transformation. My passion for developing people grew tremendously during those years. By the end of 2012, my income was nearly four times what it was when I had left the corporate world in 2008.
However, I chose to give it all up and focus on leadership development across all industries with people at all levels.
For the second time in four years, I chose to give up my entire income and start over. In 2008, I gave it all up to follow my passion: Lean Manufacturing. In 2012, I gave it all up to pursue my purpose: Leadership Development. Today, I have published 11 of my own books on Leadership Development and Personal Growth. I’m also happier than I have ever been.
I’m also happy to say my wife, Ria, resigned from her corporate career in healthcare administration and joined me at the end of 2013. Her story is much more amazing than mine, and she has published 9 books too. We have applied the leadership principles we have been learning and teaching to others to our own lives. Instead of spending 40-60 hours per week apart at our jobs, we are now both speaking and teaching together to offer our audiences and clients a unique experience. We also invest time mentoring and coaching others as well to help them create and build their leadership development business and brand.
We no longer have careers. Today, we have answered our calling.
Has it been a smooth road?
The greatest struggle was overcoming myself. I had a lot of character work to do, probably more than most.
In my twenties, I was a very reactive person. I, like many others I’ve heard along the way, would say having a “short temper” runs in my family. If you were around me long enough, I would provide the evidence to support the belief. Since then, I’ve learned “irresponsibility” runs in my family and in many other families.
In spite of my poor character and poor choices, I remained employed and was able to advance in my career.
From 1988-2008, I was promoted 14 times. However, I probably should have been fired a 100 times. After becoming a student of leadership, I know why I wasn’t fired: I was one of the most productive workers.
Instead of valuing character over performance, the leaders I worked for valued performance over character.
I would have never made it in an organization that valued high impact leadership at all levels. Fortunately for me, I worked in organizations where none of the leaders at any level were intentionally developed.
Therefore, many of them had as much character work to do as I did. I slowly and accidentally improved over the years, nothing related to my character development was intentional in those days.
Another major struggle was choosing to make the necessary sacrifices to move forward. In 2008, I had worked 20 years to be where I was earning nearly $80,000 annually. I had also made major personal sacrifices to earn the degree that allowed me to open doors and begin to climb the corporate ladder. Then, I gave it all up and went to $0 with no benefits. And, then repeated the process in 2012.
However, it’s a lot harder to give up nearly $300,000 annually than it was to give up $80,000. But, I had learned that we must give up to go up. Then, we must give up more to stay there. But, if we want to climb even higher, we must make even more sacrifices. I detailed much of my journey in my first book, Defining Influence: Increasing Your Influence Increases Your Options.
As I started down the intentional growth path in 2008, I began making adjustments to my attitude, my decision making, and my choice to be more intentional about connecting with people. But, my focus was only applying what I was learning to be more effective doing my work. By 2012, I had grown enough to realize I needed to shift the focus to working on me for me.
I realized if I was going to become a high impact professional in the leadership industry I needed to do more intentional character work. I wanted to be authentic, living and modeling what I was learning and teaching.
I was 42 years old at the time and had drank alcohol and used profanity since I was 15 years old. I stopped doing both in 2012.
Because my values had changed over the previous four years, it wasn’t too hard to give them up. However, the greatest challenge was leaving behind all of the friends who still valued alcohol and profanity.
Often, I share this story from the stage because I want people to know we often must let go of what we want the most before we can reach what we need the most. I had to let go of a lot of bad habits and a lot of toxic people. I didn’t think I was better than them. I simply thought I had become different than them.
Here’s a simple analogy. If we’re in Dallas, TX and I decide I’m going to New York and you decide you’re going to Los Angeles, we can’t travel together. I can still love you and like you, but we must go separate ways. That was the hard part for me. Leaving behind nearly all of the people I had been spending time with because our character and values were no longer aligned was a major challenge. But over time, all of those relationships ended.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Top Story Leadership – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
Ria and I focus on leadership development and personal growth across all industries.
What sets us apart is our individual personal stories of transformation, that we are a husband and wife team, and my 11,000 hours of leading leaders and their teams through change and transformation. Some of our clients include Chick-fil-A, Koch Industries, Baptist Health, Auburn University, West Georgia Technical College, Cobb County Government, Peachtree City, Charter Bank, and many more.
Primarily, we speak together at seminars and conferences nationally, and sometimes, internationally. We consider ourselves “Motivational Leadership Speakers” and speak on topics related to character, trust, change, transformation, time management, communication, execution, leadership of self, leadership of others, and leadership of teams. We also offer onsite leadership development training for organizations that want to bring us into to support the growth and development of the people. We train and develop people from the “C” level to the front lines.
We also do a limited amount of one-on-one coaching and mentoring upon request focusing primarily on helping those who want to do what we do accelerate their journey. There are no shortcuts, but we can help them travel a bit faster. We help others learn to leverage social media, stream line book writing and self-publishing, and learn how to create and build their own personal brand.
Because of my extensive background working in manufacturing at many levels for over 25 years and my passion of leadership and personal growth, I am uniquely positioned to support high impact leaders in blue-collar industries. I help these leaders unleash their team’s potential by taking the complex and making it simple. I have developed very unique content, a series of books and videos, and a website around my Blue-Collar Leadership brand. Most leadership development content is for the upper level white-collar leaders.
However, my blue-collar content is for those most often overworked, overlooked, and underdeveloped in the blue-collar workforce: those on the front lines and those who lead them.
Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
I like being near the Atlanta airport because we can get direct flights to almost anywhere we are traveling. This saves us a lot of time when we’re traveling from one speaking engagement to another. We love dining out, there are plenty of great options in Atlanta.
We also love getting outdoors for hiking, kayaking, and mountain biking. There are a lot of trails, rivers, and streams located within and near the Atlanta area. A few are 10 minutes away, but there are many within two hours or less.
I don’t like the size of the metro area and the amount of traffic at times. Atlanta is very populated and spread out. Our “local” area can actually be a two hour drive since we live on the outer perimeter of the Atlanta metro area. From the center of town, you can drive nearly an hour in any direction and still be in the metro area. So, when you live on the edge as we do, a local client may be a two hour drive across the entire city.
Pricing:
- Speaking/Training Fees: $2,500-$20,000 varies based on location, size, duration, etc.
- Coaching/Mentoring Fees: $250/hr-$750/hr
- Most Books: $17.99
Contact Info:
- Website: www.TopStoryLeadership.com | www.BlueCollarLeadership.com
- Phone: 334-728-4143
- Email: Mack@MackStory.com
- Facebook: www.Facebook.com/Mack.Story
- Twitter: www.Twitter.com/MackStory
- Other: www.YouTube.com/c/MackStory
www.LinkedIn.com/in/MackStory
Getting in touch: VoyageATL is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
