Mark P. Fisher | [Pivot Series] What You Can Learn About Pivoting & Scrappiness from Camps and Retreat Centers’ Pivots During the Pandemic

Mark P. Fisher is the Chief Encourager of Inspiring Growth, a company that helps businesses with everything from sales and marketing to fundraising with a specialization in hospitality businesses. He also has many years of experience working with camps, retreats, and conference leaders, and recently provided a webinar to help the industry which has had to pivot and find ways to survive because of the coronavirus pandemic. 

Mark has consulted with 146 different for profit and nonprofit organizations with outstanding customer satisfaction. He has also worked with AT&T, Nissan, Red Lobster, and many more. 

John Corcoran, host of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, is joined by Mark P. Fisher, the Chief Encourager at Inspiring Growth, to talk about pivoting and helping camps innovate during these trying times. Mark also shares how a health issue and undergoing surgery changed the course of his life, what drew him into the hospitality industry, and what his organizational growth strategies are.



Available_Black copy
Available_Black copy
partner-share-lg
partner-share-lg
partner-share-lg
Available_Black copy
partner-share-lg

Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:

  • The surgery that went horribly wrong and inspired Mark P. Fisher to do what he does today
  • What drew Mark to the hospitality industry with a particular focus on camps, retreats, and conference facilities
  • How going to camps impacted John’s life
  • How a camp can preserve its identity while still being innovative
  • How Mark helps people rally around a new vision 
  • Mark talks about his surfboard strategy and how he has helped an organization in Los Angeles grow 
  • The clients Mark has been working with and how organizations have been pivoting as a reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic
  • The people Mark acknowledges for his accomplishments
  • Where to learn more about Mark P. Fisher and his organization

Resources Mentioned:

Sponsor: Rise25

Today’s episode is sponsored by Rise25 Media, where our mission is to connect you with your best referral partners, clients, and strategic partners. We do this through our done for you business podcast solution and content marketing. 

Along with my business partner Dr. Jeremy Weisz, we have over 18 years of experience with B2B podcasting, which is one of the best things you can do for your business and you personally. 

If you do it right, a podcast is like a “Swiss Army Knife” – it is a tool that accomplishes many things at once. It can and will lead to great ROI, great clients, referrals, strategic partnerships, and more. It is networking and business development; and it is personal and professional development which doubles as content marketing

A podcast is the highest and best use of your time and will save you time by connecting you to higher caliber people to uplevel your network. 

To learn more, go to Rise25.com or email us at [email protected]

To learn more, book a call with us here

Check out Rise25 to learn more about our done-for-you lead generation and done-for-you podcast services. 

Right Click here to download the MP3

Click here to subscribe via iTunes

Advertise on the Smart Business Revolution Podcast

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:10

Welcome to the Revolution, the Smart Business Revolution podcast where we ask today’s most successful entrepreneur to share the tools and strategies they use to build relationships and connections to grow their revenue. Now, your host for the revolution. John Corcoran.

John Corcoran 0:40

All right. Welcome everyone. John Corcoran. Here I am the host of the Smart Business Revolution podcast and I feel so privileged because every week I get to talk to smart CEOs, founders, entrepreneurs of companies and organizations like you know, YPO, EO, Activision Blizzard, Lending tree, Open Table, so many others. I’m also the co-founder of Rise25 and our focus is on helping to connect b2b business owners with their ideal prospects and referral partners. And I’ve got a great guest here today he’s got an interesting background. His name is Mark P. Fisher. He calls himself the Chief Encourager with a company called Inspiring Growth. It’s a company that helps businesses with everything from sales and marketing to fundraising with a specialization in hospitality businesses. He also has many years of experience working with camps, retreats and conference leaders, and recently provided a webinar which was really helping that industry which has really had to pivot and and find ways to survive given that we’re in the middle of the whole Coronavirus pandemic right now as we record this. And you know, he’s also consulted with 146 different for profit and nonprofit organizations, one group by 98%, another 23% with outstanding 99% customer satisfaction, and we’re going to talk about that how to get great reviews for Your company in this world that we live in now where there’s Yelp and TripAdvisor and so many different review sites. Mark has also worked with AT&T, Nissan, Red Lobster, Nestle speed, and many more.

But first, before we get into this interview, this episode is brought to you by Rise25 Media, our company which helps b2b businesses to get clients referrals and strategic partnerships using done-for-you podcasts and content marketing. And, you know, you’re listening to a podcast right now. If you’ve ever thought about doing a podcast, I say, yes, you should absolutely do it. And we specialize with helping b2b businesses with a high client lifetime value to use a podcast effectively. So to learn more, go to rise25media.com, or email [email protected]

Mark, I’m excited to talk to you here. He’s got a really interesting background. But first of all, let’s just start with the fact that about seven or so years ago now, you were having surgery which went on horribly wrong and that inspired what you’re doing today. So tell us that story. What happened if you were paralyzed for a short period of time as well.

Mark P. Fisher 3:09

Well, first of all, John, thanks for having me. I’ve been looking forward to hanging out with you. And I appreciate the vision that you’re casting for business owners and for podcasters. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah. So yeah, my story took a crazy turn back in 2013. I had been serving as CEO of about an $8 million nonprofit called Sandy Cove. It’s a beautiful field 152 room lodge on the Chesapeake Bay. And in the first four years of my leadership, I was there for eight years as president, I had five stomach surgeries. And those surgeries I think were partly because I just didn’t handle the stress of leadership very well. And I think some of it may have been genetic but it just, it wracked my paint on my body with pain. And I started taking narcotics. And I was taking narcotics for almost 99 years. And back in 2013, my pain doc said to me, Mark, you can’t stay on these things. Well, I already knew that because my wife came to me one day and she said, Mark, I don’t know if you realize this, but our fifth child is being raised by a different father than the other four. And for me, that was this wake up call that I was getting numb to the world, and relationships because of all these pain meds. And so I said, Well, what I do, Doc, I can’t just stop these meds and he goes, Well, I’d like to do it’s a route. It’s a relatively new procedure called a spinal cord stimulator. Have you ever heard of this?

John Corcoran 4:51

No, but it doesn’t sound like something that you would mess around with cheese.

Mark P. Fisher 4:56

Yes, well, that’s exactly how I felt. I didn’t know, I googled that recently. It spent a couple of months figuring out whether I wanted it. And here’s the short story. The doc said it’s an outpatient surgery and he has a little incision in the base of my spine. He then snakes a wire up my spine. He then closes the incision and takes a cord and connects it to a battery pack outside of my belt. It’s like a seven day trial. Now he explained to me that this was not going to heal me of all my pain. But it would allow me to block the pain with the outside controller. So every time I started feeling all that stomach, abdomen pain from all my five surgeries and adhesions, I could block it. Well that was the theory. Well, I can tell you this. After 15 minutes, I was in heaven, not literally, but the pain was being blocked. It worked gloriously until it didn’t and all All of a sudden within, I don’t know, I think it was about 15 or 20 minutes into this thing.

I felt a pain coursing through my body. It was as if someone was pouring acid into my blood. And I started screaming. I mean, I’m sort of in the outside part of the doctor’s office and I’m screaming, he comes racing in looks at me and he’s like, what’s going on? And I just, I was beyond myself. I was just in so much pain. So he told my wife he needs to get to the hospital. If he doesn’t get there quickly, there could be long term effects. Well, what we didn’t realize is the doctor had accidentally cut a blood vessel in my spine and I was bleeding out. And on my way to the hospital, I lost all feeling from my waist to my toes, and I was partially paralyzed.

Unknown Speaker 6:56

I can tell you

[continue to page 2]