Mark

My brother Mark has known me longer than almost anyone alive.

He's four years older, which meant we grew up in the same family while often experiencing it very differently.

We weren't particularly close as kids. We were brothers because we were brothers.

It took adulthood for me to really get to know him and him to really get to know me.

And the Mark I know today is someone endlessly curious about people, willing to try things that once would have made him uncomfortable, building a business he loves — and increasingly focused on one deceptively simple goal:

Have fun.

As a kid, much of Mark's world revolved around sports. He was good at them. ALL of them. And because they came naturally to him, he gravitated toward things he knew he could do well.

I was interested in completely different things.

It took leaving our hometown for Butler University for Mark to begin seeing some of those differences, well, differently.

At Butler, he encountered people with various backgrounds, interests and ways of looking at the world. He began appreciating things he hadn't understood growing up.

It's a lesson that has stayed with him.

"If I couldn't be excellent, I didn't want to do it," he says of his younger self.

Today, he thinks that's a pretty hard way to go through life.

Now he's far more willing to be uncomfortable, provided the experience is interesting, challenging or gives him an opportunity to learn something new.

That willingness eventually extended to his career.

Mark spent years in banking, working with entrepreneurs and quietly wondering why they had the courage to start businesses when he didn't.

He liked the guaranteed salary. He liked security.

Eventually, after leaving banking and working at Butler, his wife, Deb, asked the question he apparently needed to hear:

If you're ever going to do it, why aren't you going to do it now?

So he did.

He started Quade.

Entrepreneurship has taught him that believing he can do almost anything is both a strength and a liability. He can get distracted. He needs focus. And money alone isn't enough to sustain his interest.

"I've learned that for me to be successful at anything, I have to be passionate about it."

For Mark, that means helping people grow and achieve their goals.

But work occupies a different place in his definition of success today.

He and Deb have raised two kids who are now adults building lives of their own. Looking back on those parenting years, his assessment is wonderfully uncomplicated:

"We didn't fuck 'em up too bad."

He also understands something now that was harder to see while raising them: a good life can't only be about your children, your spouse, your career or everyone else's needs.

You have to remain your own person.

That perspective has become especially important as Mark and Deb think about the decades ahead.

Mark borrows a friend's rule: If it's not a hell yes, it's a hell no.

He wants to explore. Learn. Try things he's not good at. Surround himself with people he enjoys.

Or, more succinctly:

"I just want to fucking have fun."

He wants to take care of himself so he can have that fun "for a really long time."

He wants people to look at him when he's 70 and think the guy still believes he's 38.

And one of his clearest measures of future success is achieving complete freedom from social media.

There's another thread running through the Mark I know today: curiosity.

He talks about "pocketing experiences" — taking something from virtually every interaction. Sometimes someone shows him exactly how he wants to lead or live. Sometimes they show him precisely what not to do.

He doesn't particularly believe in idolizing people. Everyone is capable of disappointing you.

Instead, he collects pieces.

Lessons from family. Colleagues. Friends. People he's met throughout his career.

And Larry, our stepfather, whom Mark describes as one of the best things that ever happened to our family — a man who "poured himself into" two boys who weren't biologically his and showed them what commitment to family looked like.

It's fitting, then, that family is part of what brought Mark and me closer later in life.

After Larry died and our mom developed dementia, being brothers became less theoretical. We had to navigate something difficult together from different states.

Somewhere along the way, our relationship changed.

Mark put it better than I could:

"Now we're choosing to be brothers versus we're brothers because we're brothers."

That's the Mark I wanted to capture here.

A guy who spent much of his younger life sticking with what he knew he could do well and now wants to try things simply because they might be interesting.

An entrepreneur who eventually found the balls to bet on himself.

A husband and father discovering the freedom of the next chapter.

A relentlessly curious person collecting lessons from everyone he meets.

My brother.

And, I'm very happy to say, my friend.

So what thread is Mark following now?

Fun.

For as long as fucking possible.