"Doing Hard Stuff With Cool People" with Marcus Hall, President and Partner of California Closets.

Fatherhood On Fire

Marcus Hall is a father of twin four year olds. The President and Partner of California Closets. He serves on the Board Of Directors for Edge Mentoring. And an emerging ultra runner.

He and his wife went from zero to two kids right out of the gate. Quickly learned that discipline is key and got good support from family friends. But like any good dad you just gotta get in the trenches and get your hands dirty sometimes literally.

Shortly after his girls were born Marcus took on a new professional challenge in a leadership role at California Closets where he's now the President and Partner. He says there's no secret or playbook just "A weekly sequence of mistakes that I try to improve on daily."

Key for him is being cognizant of the whole person that is Marcus. He recognizes that without that awareness a bad day at home becomes a day at the office and vice versa. Maintaining consistent communication at home and at work is integral. He knows there are times hes got to be all in at work and times hes got to be all in at home. And setting boundaries. In his house dinner at six is important and he always makes the effort to be home for that even if sometimes his obligations don't allow that happen the effort and communication is there.

Marcus's career path has been unusual by most standards, but it's a testament to having an open handed mindset to opportunities as they arise. From sports marketing, to software, to custom closets, Marcus has created success by being open to opportunities in the situation at hand. Having had an unusual career path himself, it's enabled him to be more open to the reality that there's really only so much we can control in our children's lives and ultimately they're unique individuals. Having twins means recognizing their individuality is even that much more important.

No matter what his kids interests are, right now they're really into dance theater, it's about helping them explore that passion and facilitate opportunities to scratch that itch.

We go on to talk about the role mentoring and development in the household. Marcus compares it to his work in professionally mentoring and how much effort and intent goes into professional development, but rarely do we put down on paper how we want to love our kids and in what areas we want to pour into them. This is an area I know we all struggle with and Marcus encourages us to avoid the comparison trap. The reality is we probably are doing a great providing experiences and love for our kids, but if we can't get ourselves out of the comparison trap we don't recognize how good we are doing.

Marcus also talks about his running journey and jumping from the half marathon distance to a 50k race. Just taking the mindset of "Doing Hard Stuff With Cool People"

Marcus once shared with me the concept of "first fruits." He recognizes that it's not easy to do that each day and how fortunate he is to have a "high capacity spouse" who can run so many aspects of their household and is blessed with high attention to detail. Being intentional to start his day with the things that fill him up. Spending time reading the bible. Journaling both gratitude and stream of conscious prayers. Getting in some physical activity. Spending time with Christ in the morning knowing that the rest of his day will spent pouring out to his 51 team members and then immediately tagging in at home "blocking and tackling" his girls so his wife can finish up dinner.

Last words of advice: "Don't be to hard on ourselves. Have some level of intent. Go thank your spouse. Write love letters to your kids for them to have as an artifact when you leave this earth."

LinkedIn

https://www.californiaclosets.com/locations/indianapolis/

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