100 Atlanta Coffees, 005: Mark Wilson
Building entrepreneurial success and family roots
Entrepreneur, current Chief Impact Officer at VXI Global Solutions, former CEO at Chime Solutions
Met at The Gathering Spot on Northyards
This week I’m discussing a 100 Atlanta Coffee that I actually didn’t set up… a quasi-interview turned into a fruitful conversation around balancing family and entrepreneurship.
Building entrepreneurial success and family roots
Mark reached out to me about meeting after he was forwarded my resume and learned I was between gigs.
I was excited and curious. Mark is a dynamic guy with consistent entrepreneurial success. He named his first business, Ryla Teleservices, after his children, Ryan and Lauren. He has achieved successful exits from two other businesses in the Business Process Outsourcing, or BPO, space. The most recent was Chime Solutions, which provided companies with US-based call center support, creating jobs in under-resourced communities.
We met at The Gathering Spot in Atlanta, a membership-only club founded in 2016 that has received national attention as a hub for Black leadership development, networking, and community building. They’ve subsequently built similar clubs in D.C. and Los Angeles, and ultimately sold the business to Greenwood, an Atlanta investment firm. The Gathering Spot was founded by Ryan Wilson, Mark’s son.
The first person I met that day was actually Mark’s daughter, Lauren. She served as Mark’s Chief of Staff at Chime. While there, she developed a software product to help employers combat absenteeism among hourly workers. They created a flexible ‘hours marketplace’ where, if an employee calls out from work, another coworker can easily pick up that shift. She’s since spun that product out into her own business, ‘I’m In,’ and raised capital as a first-time entrepreneur, following in the family footsteps.
It turns out Mark wanted to vet me to see if I’d be a good fit for Lauren’s team at I’m In. It became clear that he’s quite an active and supportive advocate for his children’s careers, which emerged as the central theme of our discussion.
We talked about the parenting journey as an entrepreneur, specifically the challenges that arose at different stages of his children’s lives relative to his level of career exertion at the time. This is top of mind for me as I’m navigating what’s next and what to take on while prioritizing my two little girls at home.
Measuring the quality of connection
Mark’s advice was relatively novel - throughout his career, he always pursued an intangible metric, the depth of connection he felt with his children.
This connection is strengthened when children know they are a priority to you. That’s a function not only of quality time spent together, but also your choices to prioritize what matters to them - whether that’s attending games or performances, ensuring you can share meals, or another unique bonding mechanism you develop together.
What’s nice, according to Mark, is that it’s actually easy to intuitively measure the strength of connection with your child. He says we all know when we’re emotionally in step with our loved ones, and it got easier over time as his children grew older and were more able to express what mattered to them and how they needed him to show up.
Reflections & Questions for Discussion
Habits to build connection
So far in my 2.5 years of parenting I’ve noticed a difference between simply being around my kids compared to when I am truly present with them. Sure, I can do the morning routines and shuttle us through dinner and bedtime. but am I doing more than just checking the box? It’s especially hard for me if I’m planning to re-open my laptop after they go down; I find myself mentally drifting towards the work to be done.
What switches us to a plane of connection is when we have enough time to really dive into an activity together and they get to dictate the agenda and the pace, with me being an active participant. Every time this happens I’m re-reminded of how important it is, and yet it still requires intention to notice and prioritize cultivating that time together.
Did you have a particular practice or habit with a parent growing up that led to a consistent sense of connection? If you’re a parent now, how are you thinking about building that?
Experience being the ‘other’
I was the only white person in the room at The Gathering Spot.
After George Floyd was killed, one of the Black guys in my small group from church talked about the importance of being the only person of a certain race in a space and wishing that more of us could experience it.
It’s since happened to me four times, and each memory sticks out. I’m used to traveling through life as part of the dominant majority, and I notice my senses heightened right to the borderline of feeling uncomfortable when I’m clearly the ‘other’ in a space… And even then, I’m experiencing what it’s like to be the other as a straight white man, the identity that has permission to exist in the most spaces in our culture.
Not all experiences of discomfort come with the same power dynamics or threats. And because of that, it’s even more important to put ourselves in those uncomfortable spaces — to notice the feelings, grow, and seek to have a degree of understanding of what our non-white brothers and sisters experience.
Getting outside our comfort zones feels healthy, though it can be so easy to fall into familiar routines. What are practical ways we can facilitate getting out of our bubbles more broadly to be around people from different walks of life?
About The Gathering Spot:
The Gathering Spot feels like it was on-trend for a number of different important movements, ranging from remote and hybrid work, to the need for community spaces where people can interact authentically, and curated experiences that promote culture.
I just had coffee, but the breakfast looked phenomenal.
About 100 Atlanta Coffees:
Through LEAD Atlanta, church, and business networking, I’ve gotten to meet some amazing folks who have sharpened my thinking, broadened my understanding, and inspired me.
I decided to publish 100 of these coffees and my reflections as a way to shine a light on some of the good souls, and local spots, in our city.
Another thoughtful and thought provoking coffee chat. AL & UT