Learn How To Get Better Every Day With Marc Reifenrath
People should learn how to adopt the "get better every day" mindset. Everyone needs to become a better person. You know that is what God wants. He wants you to strive to be the best father, brother, boss, anything. Join your host Chad Burmeister and his guest Marc Reifenrath on his journey to becoming a better person. Marc is the CEO and founder of Spinutech. Learn how he leads his team by example by having that get better every day mindset. Find out how you can consistently get better today.
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Learn How To Get Better Every Day With Marc Reifenrath
I'm with Marc Reifenrath, who is the Founder and CEO of Spinutech. They have been around since 2000 with 170-plus employees in multiple locations. They are a digital marketing agency. We are going to have some fun. Marc had some interesting ups and downs in life as we all do. We are going to peel into that and understand how he has been directed and leaned on God through those situations.
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Marc, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me. It's an honor.
It has been a lot of fun. I just had a blog post come out and it's up on LinkedIn. A colleague named David Carpenter. He's helping companies redirect their retirement portfolios into Christian-based investments. In 2020, they diverted $300 million of spending so it can have an impact on those founders who follow Kingdom Minded Mindset. It's pretty interesting. He wrote a blog about God Inc. and how two other people in my show said they actually worked for God out of the 60 I have talked to and I'm like, "That's awesome. How do I work for God?”
I'm not making this up. I wrote that down as one of my notes that this isn't my business, it's God's business and I'm just the steward to run it.
There's a small group of like-minded people out there and I don't think it's that small. It's pretty large. It has been a lot of fun having so many guests on this show and talking about it. Let's dig in. I like to start by rewinding the tape and tell me about when you were younger. You are in Iowa now. Have you always been there? Where did you grow up? Tell me about your passions when you were a kid.
I’m born and raised in a small town in Iowa, through and through. My dad was a Superintendent of the school. My mom stayed at home with the three of us that were kids. I would say my childhood was a typical Midwestern small-town experience. Outside of town in the '80s, you’ve got to run the town a little more than maybe you would now.
I played a lot of sports and played whatever pickup game or hide and seek in the neighborhood. I would describe it as a pretty normal childhood but normal is only what you know as a child. It was great for me and it was a solid upbringing. I looked back on it with very fond memories. Actually, I went back to one of the towns that I grew up when I was one until 5th grade.
I was like, “Here's the dam where we used to go and snake carp.” The Indian trails that were alongside the lake and all of the big playground that I had, basically that was in this town. She was like, "How do you remember all this?" I’m driving around and pointing out all the different things like, “This is where I’ve got my first cut.” It was fun to bring her through that journey as well. She was a farm kid. Everything you are describing is you were a town kid and so. It's fun to compare and contrast those upbringings.
Get Better Every Day: It’s always easier to lead than to be a follower.
That's really neat. It jogs the memories and makes you realize sometimes how far we have come in life when you go back, sees the trees and the pathways. Even the zag and the path are probably the same zags that it was. Based on what you like to do as a kid, is there any connection from then to now? Did you lead people then? Did you find yourself always being a leader and now you've got 170 people working for you? Tell me more about that.
In reflection, maybe more than I would have thought at the time, probably more in high school, I tended to do more of those things. What's funny is I looked at it, it was easier to lead than to be a follower. I did it and it was more of a lazy factor at being younger. I thought that was the easier job to do and so I would do that.
Even in sports, whether it was a coach or a parent saying, "You really stepped up in whatever situation and led the team through that." That's not every situation but there were moments where that happened that could have been a junior high game or a pickup game but those opportunities present themselves. I don't know if I thought I was a leader necessarily but I have gravitated towards those things.
Even in college, just having all the random college jobs that you have. I was a Bellman at a Holiday Inn. I worked at a hog farm and restaurants. Pretty much, you name it. I have tried it probably. What I did find myself doing is picking up on traits of leaders that I liked but more importantly, what I didn't like. Those stood out to me.
By the time I was a junior in college, I was managing a cell phone store so sales started to rise to the top for me. I'm outgoing and connect with people but all those lessons I learned in my third life, I applied to that. Here are the things that I don't like. Here are the things that I do like and accentuate.
We used to have people over to the house to watch the Mike Tyson-Holyfield fight and all that stuff. At the time, you don't realize that you are leading people and then when you get there, it's like, "I guess I have always had that characteristic." Going through life, we often run into a buzz saw at times. I had a car accident in 2000. That was head-on and that was not fun. My friend made it, so did I and the other guy. That was great but it was tough for a little while and other stuff happens along the way. What's hit you upside the head that caused you to wake up and smell the roses a bit?
My wife and I, have had a few of these things come upon us. A couple of storms. We’ve got married in 2001 when I graduated from college. We intentionally were waiting to have kids, and then we started to try maybe five years in and it wasn't working but we were patient and think it was not big of a problem.
It just wasn't happening and, of course, I mentioned to you, God's plan is always better than your plan. You just don't realize it at the moment. The journey we were about to go on was much longer than I would have ever guessed but we kept trying. They sent us to Iowa City, which is a local expert fertility clinic. For two years in, we had moved to a smaller town from Cedar Falls, Iowa.
We’ve got into a new house and six months later, we’ve got hit by a tornado to EFI that makes national news wipes until the ground. One, it’s great that we didn't have kids because I don't know that more than the two of us would have survived what happened. We were home. That was a very traumatic event but also because you knew, you lease on life as a car accident. People did die. We could have died. You were right on the doorstep and survived, so I’m very thankful.
Progressing with the kid thing, we went to some medications, and then we did IVF and that failed. We ended up having a few embryos saved. We created five embryos in 2013 and several rounds of IVF, and we had two left. My wife ended up getting uterine cancer. IVF was off the table. Thankfully, that was a relatively quick procedure to get that done and all the cancer was gone. It’s another wrinkle in the journey of the kids. In the background, we started to talk about surrogacy. We are going to do this and that before she got cancer, what led to cancer, as we did get pregnant with twins naturally, and we’ve got to eleven weeks. Unfortunately, they didn’t make it.
That was a big defeat. What was funny is literally, the week we found out we were pregnant with twins, one of my wife's childhood best friends calls her and says that her husband's a sheriff and was on a drug task force. One of his informants comes and says, "I need some money." He says, "For what?" "For an abortion."
“I'm not going to give you money for an abortion. You better find parents for this kid." He was like, "I might know somebody." I'm coming home from work high on life, we were pregnant with twins and my wife is like, “So-and-so just called. We are going to adopt this baby," and I was like, "What? 0 to 3 in 9 months. You are crazy. That's just way too fast." We lose the twins but this opportunity was still there and our friends did a good job of giving us a space and then coming back. We ended up having 30 days to make this decision and we did. We have a beautiful, almost seven-year-old baby boy. He looks and acts like us.
No doubt in my mind, that was just the delivery mechanism to get into us, and then she gets cancer. It has a full hysterectomy and gets rid of cancer. It didn't have ongoing treatments and another best friend from high school or childhood comes forth and says, "I will carry the babies." We worked out that whole situation with them.
Get Better Every Day: If a teammate needs help, jump in and help them. Job descriptions are descriptions, not boundaries.
She was graceful and perfect. It’s a huge sacrifice, obviously, but amazing. We said, "We were not good at making babies. This isn't going to work." She's like, "It's going to work. I know it's going to work." It worked and we have the beautiful baby boy and girl that will turn four. JP was born in 2014. The twins were born in 2017. We started trying in 2005 so we are not super young parents but we are also more equipped to be the parents we are. God's plan is always way better than what we can map out. Our family in our eyes is perfect the way that he drew it up and we were just impatient waiting for all that congregation.
Thank you for sharing that. We had friends in Southern California, the Torres family that couldn't have kids, and then one day they did. A boy and a girl. It was everything that you described of, “This just isn't going to happen,” all of a sudden, became a reality and they are amazing kids. I see them on posts. My best friend is adopted. When I hear stories of that, we talked about when we were kids at age five in Colorado, "Let's find out who your real parents are someday." We thought it was going to be at age eighteen. Let's go check it out. 18 turned into 30, turned into 35, and finally he did it.
He was like, "That's not my real parents." It helped them check the box and say, "My parents are flipping amazing." To your point, it's just the mechanism of delivery. I love that. That's so true. It was 2017 and 2014. That's amazing. Tell me about what makes you passionate now like working, either at work or going to church. What's your thing? What are you passionate about?
One of my big sayings is to get better every day. There are a lot of variations of that that people have used, none of us make up anything new but I love the whole mindset of getting better every day. That's really this applicable across all aspects of life. I can get better as a husband, as a parent, as a son, a brother, a coworker, a teammate, and then as a member of our church. I’m a member of the Kingdom. What am I going to do to make that happen? It's always little stuff. You’ve got to eat the elephant one bite at a time. I'm passionate about making myself better, but then also those around me.
In the work setting, people say, "What's your mission field?" To me, it's life but it's work, too. Leading by example, I'm not going to beat the Bible over anybody's head but we do the right thing when it's the hard thing. A lot of our core values are centered around some of those same things of, “Do the right thing if you went to the hard thing. We over me. We get better every day and then we went together.” I'm passionate about making others better, too. It's a great responsibility to lead an organization of 170 team members but how do I challenge and push our leaders to be better leaders and let the cups flow right down so it's filling everybody's cup?
I always say to every new team member too, "If you are with us for 1, 5, 10 or 20 years and you retired, I just want you to reflect on the time here and have it be the best professional and personal time of your life and growth.” You can say, “I grew and my professional skillset. That forced me to get better as a human." Those may be lofty goals but a workplace is a messy place in society now and there are a lot of bad things that can occur. There are a lot of common sense to my approach. It is to me. It’s simply challenging everybody to get better.
We set aside time for every team member to do that every month. we call it YGB24, You Get Better at 24, so 24 hours a month, they are non-billable for our work. We set aside two of those hours a week basically to get better. It's a commitment that we have made and this reflection of, “I believe the way that I attack life as well. Am I perfect at it?” By all means. That's exactly why you’ve got to get better every day is you've got to focus intentionally to get better slowly at everything you do.
I can see the T-shirt and I'm curious, did you put we over me on the wall and those kinds of things?
Totally. That's probably my favorite one. If you notice, I say team member, not employee. I think words matter. This we over me mentality is, if a teammate needs help, you jump in and help them. Job descriptions are descriptions but not a boundary. We can jump in anywhere and everywhere that pick a team member up.
It has been going on for few years and it's called Spinutech Cares. The owners, we kicked in some money to get this one started but the team owns it and it's for the storms in life like we have talked about. If somebody is in a car wreck or somebody gets hurt, it could be a lot of things. They can pull from this fund and give silently to another teammate.
I was trying to think it's not about me. I’ve got to say it a lot in lifelike, “It's not about me.” Kids help make me less selfish so how do you make this not about me? It's a nice silent under-the-table thing that helps the team member in need. That's a cool thing that instead of thinking always about the bottom dollar in business, there's a greater good that you can do, and this is the team doing that. It's a way that they can give back differently.
There are a couple of examples of people that lead like that that have been on the show. Gary VanDyke is the Founder of Food For Orphans, and then another gentleman Mark Anthony, who I just saw in Orlando, is CEO of Southeastern Food Bank. It was so fun. Usually, I will go on a trip and I will add a plus one day to go to Universal, which I did by the way or go to a concert or something. It’s just a me day when I travel. This time I did a God Day and said, "Let's go see Mark." I'm driving there and I was a little nervous because I was like, "I'm now working for God here. What if I mess up?" It was fabulous. I met him and his wife.
We went out to lunch. We met the rest of the workforce. His stated goal is to be able to donate food, furniture, and things in international locations because now there have been Southeastern. It just so happens my company helps with outreach. I was like, "We could do LinkedIn, voicemails and emails. You tell me whatever we need to do, just like your marketing agency so when you can deploy it and say, ‘Let's carve out some resources.’"
It doesn't cost me that much money because the people are already employed. They have the bandwidth. We've got the technology. What do you need to do? I was just like, "Whenever you come up with a creative idea, did you send me a paragraph?” “Chad, here's what I want to do and it will be done."
I'm like, “Now I understand all the preparation of many years has gotten me to a point where I can help these people grow the Kingdom.” It's very interesting. If you go fast forward the tape three years and you look back, and you came back on the show and say, "This has been awesome." What would you tell me happened over those three years?
The whole get better everyday mentality of, “Did I grow? Am I in a better place than I was three years ago?” There are going to be hurdles and obstacles. “How do I handle those? Did I stick to my faith?” I would just say consistency more than anything. Society would challenge you to answer that question differently but those are worldly things, for the most part. I'm not focused on those as much. You have to be responsible obviously but I want to make sure I'm growing in all parts a better husband, parent, coworker, leader and Christ-follower. You then turn all that into a magnet and draw more people towards that as well.
I happened to see Glenn Beck on my flight home. I'm not a big Glenn Beck follower but it just popped up on my feed and so I watched this ten-minute talk. His perspective is that, it's going to get to a place in society where we get pulled into what is going on with everything and people are going to tend to want to go raise a red flag.
He said, "We need to go back to the Bible and love on other people. That's really the only way that we make it through all this." It's important that we focus on that. Leaders like yourself that can influence 170 people, and then some over the next three years are just more important than ever to remind people of that.
Another colleague Darryll Stinson, he's the Founder of Second Chance Athletes, and he's an ex-player that hurt himself, got pain meds, and then almost went the wrong direction. God tapped him on the shoulder and he did amazing with his whole life now, amazing kids, etc. He just put out a shirt that says, "You matter." I was like, "That's just like we over me." It's black and white. He's African-American and that's the message, "You matter."
Get Better Every Day: Ask yourself, did you grow? Are you in a better place than you were three years ago?
I have been challenging a lot of fronts and love solves a lot of that. We ought to start from there and more of that, in general, is not going to hurt anything. It's a nice reset for everything and every approach. I'm fully aligned with that. You’ve just got to start with love.
The last question is around faith and we have talked a little bit about this. To turn the question a little bit on a TED, have there been times in life where maybe you start to get outside the lines? It was at Universal so I think of Disney where it's got those little trains that have got the bumper in the middle that pulls you or the car. I had one of those driverless cars. I was driving and all of a sudden, it would steer you back into the middle of the lane. Have you had times where the car wanted to veer out and how did you pull back?
That happens to all of us. I don't know that all of us want to admit it but that's the devil that we are constantly. We are tempted and we are challenged every day. When I went to college, I probably drifted a little bit, and my wife then-girlfriend gave me a hard pull back in, which is great. There has been a time in the marriage where I have had to do that to her and suddenly, it's a goal if that's a great partnership. Even heading up to the tornado, we were shifting between two churches, and then after that, we were like, "Let's dedicate to where she grew up going to church and plunged on there, create a little bit more accountability and stuff."
Fortunately, nothing major but there are always tugs and pulls. Even being a leader of a large organization, time and energy are the biggest things. I'm tired and I'm worn out. There are times where the church wants me to do things and I have said, "No," and then you are like, "Checkbook and calendar." Those are the two biggest ways to see where your values lie. My calendar has got to get a little better on that at times. As you say, "What's the balance of all that?" Family, work and fun are tugging at it. That's something I always get better is just that time and am I using my talents for the Kingdom in all areas.
When my son had a burn accident in February 2021, I really veered heavily towards building the app, launching Living a Better Story and doing a lot. I rebounded heavily towards, "I’ve got to do for God." 70% nonprofit of Kingdom work and 30% work. My CFO, even now, was like, "We’ve got to do at least 50/50 because you’ve got to make sure sales stay up."
What I have learned is I can do parallel work and I would think with your business, you could do the same thing. Find those nonprofits like Southeastern Food Bank and say, "I'm going to apply my lessons learned over the years and your cost is 1/10th of what the value is to him." I have one product that cost me $80 a month and probably a couple of hours of my team's time but to him, he hired a $7,000 a month administrator. It's like, "I'm going to do ten of those." 10x$80 is still $800 but to the market, the world and God. It feels like a massive lift. There's your challenge of the day. Marc, any final thoughts as we wrap up here?
No. I appreciate the folks of this show. It's fun to have these types of conversations. Thanks for having me. It has been an honor to be here and talk about this.
Thank you for sharing. A lot of people faced difficult times with having kids. I know someone in my family is. They did the embryo freeze and ran out but there are other solutions and you have just shared that with the world. Thank you so much. Marc Reifenrath is the Founder and CEO of Spinutech. It's Spinutech.com. If you want to work with someone who's Kingdom-focused and great at what they do and all things digital, website development and design, digital marketing, SEO, SCM, all of the above, he would be a great person to talk to. Thank you for being here, Marc. We will catch everybody on the next episode.
Thanks so much.
Important Links:
LinkedIn - Blog Post
David Carpenter – Past Episode
Gary VanDyke – Past Episode
Darryll Stinson – Past Episode
About Marc Reifenrath
Spinutech is a national digital agency focusing on digital marketing, web design and web development with five locations (Chicago, Tampa, Denver, Des Moines and Cedar Falls). Spinutech specializes in delivering digital solutions that meet and exceeds the specific needs of our clients. Spinutech has clients in all 50 states and 10+ countries.
Our process incorporates a unique combination of services which enable you to more effectively communicate your company's message. Whether it be web design, web development, web strategy, digital marketing or SEO—our services are designed to complement one another and generate your digital success!
