Name: Mark de Grasse

Title: President

Organisation: DigitalMarketer.com

Mark de Grasse is the President of DigitalMarketer, an eLearning company focused on skill development for professional marketers, marketing agencies, and small business owners. Mark de Grasse is a content strategist focused on integrated, genuine approaches to marketing and management. Mark has been working in content development since the mid-2000s, creating tens of thousands of articles, graphics, videos, and podcasts over the years.

Thank you to the 2,000 leaders who’ve generously done the 7 Questions on Leadership!

I hope Mark's answers will encourage you in your leadership journey. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Jonno White

1. What have you found most challenging as a leader?

Aligning the needs of the organization with the desires and goals of each individual, including customers, employees, and managers.

2. How did you become a leader? Can you please briefly tell the story?

I'm usually placed in leadership positions without wanting or trying to be there. I consider leadership a grudging responsibility, rather than something desirable. My core desire is to help other people and sometimes that requires me to lead.

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

Energizing myself in the morning and systematically calming down at night. I try to work on the most urgent projects as soon as possible, then work the rest of the day as best as I can to make progress. Waking involves prayer, breathwork, and yoga... relaxing involves meditation, exercise, contrast therapy (as often as I can), art (ideally), and more breathwork.

4. What's a recent leadership lesson you've learned for the first time or been reminded of?

You never control everything, and therefore everything is not your responsibility.

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

EMyth Revisited does an excellent job explaining the purpose and structure of both business and growth. It always reminds me that your role as a leader is to structure, teach, and empower individuals to execute a system... but at the end of the day, the success or failure of that system will be based on the individuals rather than the system itself.

6. If you could only give one piece of advice to a young leader, what would you say to them?

Be humble and never expect to take out more from a business than what you put in. I'm not talking about long hours either... I'm talking about intelligence, dedication, and belief in both the product/service being delivered and the organization itself. If that doesn't align, no amount of effort will fix the fact that you don't belong there.

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader, so far?

My 10 year old son is an aspiring MLB player (and super serious about it). Even though he trains all the time, he can't touch his toes because he never stretches. I've taken it upon myself to teach him the importance of mobility by building up my own abilities through training....

I can now do a variety of challenging yoga positions (which I learned specifically to impress/inspire him into action), and while he still has a long way to go, he's now stretching more often. The lesson I learned is that the process of influence has had just as great of an impact on the person teaching as it does on the student. Leadership is learning.