Derek Block knows what it means to be on the brink – to have been brought low after flying high.

But more importantly, the founder/CEO of Mason, OH-based Top 40 distributor Touchstone (asi/345631) and former Counselor Distributor Entrepreneur of the Year has learned how to persist and power back to prosperity.

Watch the interview with Derek Block above.

In a conversational forum at the virtual 2020 ASI Power Summit on Thursday, Oct. 22, Block spoke with a hard-won humility and honesty about his rocky path, detailing how it’s helped him and his company adapt and thrive amid the COVID-19 crisis.

Chatting with ASI’s Vice President of Editorial, Events & Education Michele Bell, Block detailed how he was a young hotshot entrepreneur when he founded Touchstone in 2005. Success came fast, but so did no small amount of hubris. And while Block was wonderful at winning sales, he wasn’t adept at running a business.

“I wasn’t a great CEO,” he said with candor. “I was playing at business. I wasn’t doing business.”

Overly confident that certain endemic issues “would work themselves out,” checked out on the operations side and not properly vested in other key elements of the business, it eventually became impossible for Block to keep the company on track. Despite massive revenue totals, things unraveled. Ultimately, the business verged on ruin. And as the professional fires raged, Block received the diagnosis everyone dreads: cancer.

Derek Block

“When they start throwing the C-word around, you don’t know if you’re going to live or die,” said Block.

Many might have buckled under such weight. Block even found himself asking a trusted colleague if he should resign and leave the industry he loved and had long made his livelihood in. The colleague’s advice? “Go win more business.”

The CEO determined to do just that, but with a newfound sense of humbleness and willingness to learn everything he needed to learn to be a proper leader. With the help of consultants and his investment partner, Block set about painstakingly righting the ship.

It took guts. It took flexibility. It took stretching himself into new areas. It took finding the energy despite the health scare, which he ultimately defeated. But Block did it – did it so well in fact that Touchstone again cracked Counselor’s ranking of the promo industry’s 40 largest distributors, clocking in at 36th on 2020’s list, thanks to 2019 North American promotional product revenue of $48.5 million.

“Getting your business flipped upside down, there’s a lot of humility in that,” confessed Block. But, he added, it was essential to making him the leader he is today.

And what kind of leader is that? One that was so fully engaged with his company’s strengths and positioning that he was able to act swiftly to expertly guide it through the COVID-caused economic maelstrom of 2020. “When the pandemic came on, we had immediate alignment about making decisions quickly,” said Block, who noted that an initial round of layoffs was reversed within a couple months thanks to Touchstone’s booming sales.

"If the data is wrong, the decision will be wrong." -Derek Block . . .Yes!!! SUCH WISE WORDS RIGHT HERE!! #ASIPowerSummit

— Charity Gibson (@licensetoswag) October 22, 2020

Indeed, defying the industry-wide trend of plummeting sales, Touchstone’s revenue is up, and that’s not a result of personal protective equipment business: The company has sold less than $50,000 in PPE.

What’s been Touchstone’s secret sauce? One element is the firm’s rapid shift of focus to providing kitted solutions of branded merchandise for clients to send to widely dispersed workforces that suddenly found themselves working from home amid societal shutdowns. “We’ve been helping clients keep tethered to their employee base without them having venues in which to build relationships,” related Block.

Another focus has been making the most of a market niche Touchstone was strong in pre-pandemic: online influencers who sell branded merchandise to their fans. “You have a lot of kids at home who are willing to spend $25 of their money – or their parents’ money – on a garment” from social media stars they like, Block noted.

At the end of the day, Block’s story provides a profound lesson that promo professionals would do well to keep in mind, especially during the immensely stressful days of the pandemic: Troubles will come, but how you react to them is what makes all the difference.