Meet Marek

ARTA: First off, tell us about your name: Marek. It seems like a typo.

Marek: Yeah, I’ve never heard that one before. The simple answer is that it was in a name book. My mom liked it and chose it.

The more complex answer is that there was quite the battle between my mom and dad over what to name me.  My dad, forever a hippie (and this was in 1968), wanted to name me ‘Now’.  He had changed his name to ‘Today’, and he felt that ‘Today’ was the father of ‘Now’; it made a lot of sense to him.

Marek: Well, quite a bit actually. I started working on the river in 1989 and guided through 1994.  During the course of that, I finished college and followed the sun by guiding in Central and South America in the off season. In 1993, while guiding in California, I met Tori, who would later become my wife. We bought some property in Coloma, built a house, and got married in 1996. I started a career in sales in 1995, and, as I like to say: “It worked out”. I started in inside sales for an alarm equipment manufacturer and was promoted to outside sales and they moved me to Santiago, Chile for two years. Tori and I lived in an apartment and used every weekend to travel around the country.

Marek: Oh, this is a great story.

Tori and I actually met briefly in 1990 (but she would deny this forever – see below). Her former fiancé was good friends with my buddy Rusty Grimm and they all came out to kayak in California and a group of us ended up boating the Tuolumne together.

Fast forward three years and Dick Linford [co-owner of ECHO, the company that Marek guided for] calls me up and asks: “Hey, what do you know about Tori Pillinger?” I told him I had only met her briefly a few years earlier, but I remember her being social and super athletic (she was a downhiller on the US ski team and had probably worked out more by the time she was 21 than most people will in an entire lifetime). Dick decided to offer her a job if she could make it out to Placerville for our guide orientation. Rusty and I were badass Tuolumne guides back then and were on our way back from Groveland to Placerville after running some high water Tuolumne Trips (probably). Walking into the guide house was like coming home. It was spring in California and everyone was in town from wherever they were for the winter. Looking across the room, I saw countless familiar faces, and one new one: Tori. I immediately recognized her from years before (I’ve been told that my memory is pretty astounding). She was standing next to Theo, Rusty’s fiancé so I casually walked up, gave Theo a hug and introduced myself to Tori. I said, “Hi, I’m Marek.”  She smiled and said, “I’m Tori.” I said, “Yeah, we met a few years ago on the Tuolumne.”

She promptly responded, “Hmmm, I don’t remember that.”

I was crushed. Scraping my ego off the floor, I said, “Well, it’s nice to meet you. Welcome to ECHO. Have a great night.” and walked away.

What I didn’t know until later was that when Rusty and I walked in the door, Tori looked at Theo and said, “WHO is THAT?!?” I was hooked and “coincidentally” (air quotes), there were a lot of opportunities for her to come down to the Tuolumne with Rusty and Theo in the next couple of weeks. After two weeks of her trying to remain single and me falling head over heels, we were supposed to go kayaking with Rusty and Theo when both of them came down with some “random illness“, leaving Tori and me to paddle the South Fork together. Just the two of us. That was it.

One of the advantages of having a career as a traveling salesperson was the frequent flier miles and hotel points. We had a saying: “Whoever dies with the most frequent flier miles, LOSES”, so it was our annual mission to find some exotic place and use our frequent flier miles to return to our dirtbag roots. I got pretty good at trading a business suit for board shorts and our adventures continued. We backpacked around Everest and large parts of South America, and when the kids were older, we rode elephants in Thailand, camels in Morocco, watched soccer in Barcelona, surfed in Baja, Bali, Nicaragua and the Philippines while also learning to sail and snorkel in Tahiti and Tonga.

ARTA: Any similarities between the multi-million-dollar alarm industry and the non-profit whitewater rafting world (besides the obvious ones)?

Marek: Is think the dress code is the most similar. That, and the use of virtual meetings! I thought my days of webinars and conference calls were behind me, but it’s almost as if the whole world is doing things virtually these days.

The other big similarities are around ensuring a joyful customer experience and employee (river guide) delight. In a large corporation, you end up running “your own business” so to speak and you can set the bar for what your customer experience looks like. Running a sales organization, you also realize how your team is the primary touch point for your customers. Working to make sure your team is thriving is an important part of delivering a great customer experience. Lastly, I spent a lot of my years working with small businesses. Whether you’re a rafting company or a security company there are a lot of similarities in small business.

ARTA: Speaking of sales teams and river guides, any cross-over skill sets? You know, would you rather take a river guide into a corporate sales meeting or have a salesperson guide you over Clavey Falls?

Marek: That’s an easy one. I’d take a river guide to a corporate sales meeting. River guiding is hard work and requires a unique skillset. You’ve got to be adaptable. You have to keep your cool when things go sideways. Communication is another key crossover skill. As a guide, you get used to safety orientations, camp orientations, etc. so standing up in front of a group becomes second nature to you. That’s a really valuable skill that many people underestimate. Don’t get me wrong, there are some great salespeople out there, but I’ve only met a few that I’d even want in my boat going over Clavey and even fewer I’d want guiding it!

Marek: One: Michael Franti; I love his music and music always makes for a great trip. Two: Rusty Grimm; he and I guided together, and I did a trip with him last summer; he always instigates thought-provoking conversation, and I feel like I get smarter just sitting next to him. Three: Zach Byars; Captain Fun, and he’s pretty good at music and river rescue in case anything happens. Four and five: My two daughters; they love all of these people and watching them experience the canyon warms my heart. And six: Richard Branson; I find him quite inspirational and I bet he’s got some stories to tell.

And, of course, if I could pick anyone, it would be Tori. For all of the obvious, and not so obvious reasons. We met on the river and spent a lot of time on the river over the years.