Derek Block has grown accustomed to overcoming the odds.

The founder/CEO of Mason, OH-based Top 40 distributor Touchstone (asi/345631) and the 2009 Counselor Distributor Entrepreneur of the Year achieved rapid success when his company burst onto the scene in 2005. But while Block was wonderful at winning sales, he wasn’t adept at running a business. Checked out on the operations side and not properly vested in other key elements of the business, it eventually became impossible for him to keep the company on track.

Block found himself asking a trusted colleague if he should resign and leave the industry he loved. The colleague’s advice? “Go win more business.”

And that’s exactly what the CEO did. With the help of consultants and his investment partner, Block set about painstakingly righting the ship. The hard work paid off – Touchstone again cracked Counselor’s ranking of the promo industry’s 40 largest distributors, finishing 36th on 2020’s list, with 2019 North American promotional product revenue of $48.5 million.

And in 2020? Touchstone had a banner year, generating $72.5 million in revenue – good for a 49.5% sales increase. Even more impressive, Block’s company recorded that staggering growth while selling just five figures worth of PPE.

In this Q&A, Block explains how he overcame the odds again in 2020, taking Touchstone to even greater heights during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Q: How was 2020 for Touchstone?

A: I was skeptical about COVID at first. I would go to my kids’ sporting events and couldn’t believe that credible people like doctors were saying this could be their only game of the season. And then I talked to someone in the industry who said this thing will go to July or August, and I was like “you’re crazy.”

But after being at the doorstep of failure before, I knew how important it was to take preventative progressive action every day. Our leadership team began holding a daily meeting at 8:30 a.m. to go over our goals. We immediately did a round of layoffs and there was a 25% salary cut across the board. I even took a 35% cut.

Then we got into PPE. There was a lot of opportunity at the beginning, but we were conflicted on if it was right to take advantage of the situation. After experiencing the rush for Silly Bandz and fidget spinners, we knew PPE would be commodity-based. At some point, people could just buy it at Costco.

Instead, we focused on what businesses were doing to be tethered to their employees, clients and prospects while everyone was at home. For us, we had already transitioned to being a Cloud-based business, so we were already efficient at working semi-remotely. We also had a really diverse set of clients who needed our help in using promotional products to tell their story.

Q: What were your total sales for 2020?

A: $72.5 million. And that’s with only doing about $50,000 to $100,000 in PPE sales.

Q: What markets did you target?

A: We work with a lot of retail brands, helping with their manufacturing, label swapping and custom packaging. We also work heavily in the social digital space with people that don’t know how to monetize their content into product. Of course, our corporate customers are equally important.

From March through October, we also focused on things in our infrastructure we could work on that we never had time for in a normal day. It was an internal rallying cry of we want to be in mid-season form when the world gets back to normal rather than limping back to life.

Q: What was something in your infrastructure that you worked on?

A: Our recipe for building brands is following a specific set of tools and building visual line plans. We really refined those tools and workshops and cleaned up our master table of contents. Our implementation process was 12 years old, so when we onboarded a new customer, there were antiquated components. We basically streamlined our systems and processes to make us more efficient.

In October, Block spoke at Power Summit Live about overcoming cancer and the near failure of his business that led to the renewed success Touchstone is seeing today.

Q: If you hadn’t been on “the doorstep of failure” before, do you think you would have been able to handle the pandemic so well?

A: Well, I wouldn’t say we were any less worried. When you have experience of going through hard times, you don’t wait with a belief that it’s going to get better or it won’t be that bad. We made quick decisions because we learned that we should have made those tough decisions much earlier last time.

Q: Are you back to the staffing levels you were at pre-pandemic?

A: We brought back a good number of people and in the beginning of summer, we paid back the haircut everybody took.

Q: What's your outlook for 2021?

A: Growth. Our primary budget calls for a lot of growth and our visionary budget calls for exceptional growth. We don’t look at last year as an anomaly. We didn’t have one-hit wonders and don’t have to worry about PPE dropping off. I say this with humility and confidence – this is what we’ve been built to do. I hope anybody in the industry that reads this can find one nugget to take away and deploy. Stop putting off that one thing you know needs to be remedied. Do one thing now that will make your future better.