Elevate Ep 59: Leadership & Giving Back with Mark Hall, Founder & CEO of TalentLogistix

Jason Ulm (0:02)

Welcome to The Elevate Podcast, where every leader has a story. We bring you conversations with influential leaders who are shaping our local communities. Hear about their path to leadership and experiences that define them, and how they're driving meaningful impact today.

Hey everybody, Jason Ulm here with another episode of The Elevate Powered by Braden Podcast. And I've got a newer friend to me, but I don't know that our episode and our format can really contain your story based on the first conversation we had over coffee. But I'm super excited to hear more about it and to share it with our listeners. But Mark, welcome to the show.

Mark Hall (0:40)

Thank you, Jason. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. It'll be an interesting conversation.

Jason Ulm (0:44)

Absolutely. So tell our viewers, and where are you at today? What are you doing today?

Mark Hall (0:49)

So today, for 34 and a half years, CEO and founder of TalentLogistix, we're a workforce solutions company that has about a dozen different stories that we can tell of successes. So some of it is the staff augmentation in the traditional world. Some of it is outsourced labor. We focus in the trades, and then all of the white-color work that surrounds the trades. And we've been doing that. We've W2'd over 65,000 people in our 34 years on over 440,000 gigs in almost every state and in three countries.

Jason Ulm (1:22)

So not much, really. No, no.

Mark Hall (1:24)

I'm not busy at all.

Jason Ulm (1:25)

I'm busy at all. And that's only part of the story. And so like I said, I won't be able to contain it all. But let's go back to the beginning.

Mark Hall (1:30)

What's your genesis?

Jason Ulm (1:31)

Where are you from?

Mark Hall (1:32)

So I'm from a small town in Southern Illinois. My wife and I were childhood sweethearts. We just celebrated the 50th anniversary of our first date.

Jason Ulm (1:41)

All right. So what town in Illinois?

Mark Hall (1:44)

So we're both from a little town called Robinson, Illinois. Okay. The home of Heath candy bars. Okay. Ever had a Heath candy bar?

Jason Ulm (1:50)

Absolutely. Sure.

Mark Hall (1:50)

So I went to high school with the Heath children. My grandmother retired from the Heath factory. This is a town of about 4,000. When we were there, it's about 7,000. Now nestled in between Tarahota and Vincennes just in southeastern Illinois. I used to go to Tarahota and Vincennes on the weekend for a fun, which tells you about the scope of the town that we grew up in. Got you.

Jason Ulm (2:12)

All right. So growing up in that town, what did high school look like for you?

Mark Hall (2:15)

What were you doing? I was a quasi-jock. I was pretty good at baseball, got hurt playing football, but I was not in the jock group.

I was not in the Fockeler kid group. I was not in the jock group. I existed in the ethos sphere outside of that. Good student, loved the work. I never really fit in into either one of those. I was not a football guy. I was a baseball guy. I got injured and ruptured my spleen early on, so football became a non-entity for me. Shorts, sports, sports, and then girls, which would explain how I met my wife.

Jason Ulm (2:51)

All right. So you finish up high school. What do you think is going to come next?

Mark Hall (2:56)

I'm working. So one of the things that I credit my parents with is an extremely hard work ethic. No one has really ever been able to outwork me.

Jason Ulm (3:04)

Okay.

Mark Hall (3:04)

It comes from my dad's side. A union boiler maker by trade.

Jason Ulm (3:08)

Yeah.

Mark Hall (3:08)

My mom worked all kinds of retail jobs. So I was instilled at a very young age with a work ethic. I took my first paper route at 11 or 12

I took my first job when I was 14 and a half. I was a fry cook. I'd worked my way up to the assistant manager job at the local dairy mart.

Lisa was one of my carhops. She will tell you she's the one that got me the job. So I'm working and going to school. I got my first job with a CPA group in Robertsville by learning to program, Ken doing income tax recharts. I'm going to school full-time. I'm 17 and a half, not even 18 yet. They send me to New York City for training in a particular program language because I'm going for an information technology degree at the local junior college, working full-time, going to school full-time. And I'm not even 18 I can't write a hotel room.