Speaking and Communicating Podcast

You're going through a job loss, all parts of life, relationship problems, job losses, career failures, problems with your family, all those types of things. You have to keep pushing because that will not be forever. Everything in life has an expiration date. Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I am your host, Roberta Ndlela. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally,
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This is the podcast you should be tuning into. Communication and soft skills are crucial in your career growth and leadership development. Whether you're about to speak in public, make presentations at work, pitch to investors or an entrepreneur looking to showcase your innovation to a wider audience, you'd be glad you joined us. By the end of this episode, log on to Apple and Spotify.
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Leave us a rating and a review and what you'd like for us to discuss on this podcast. Let's get communicating.
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My guest today is a returning veteran guest of this podcast, a friend of the show and a friend of mine personally, Mr. Mark V. Smith is now the coordinator of COVID-19 workforce development economic recovery program at Prince George's County, Maryland, which is the biggest county in Maryland state.
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Before that, he was working on the Center for Urban Families, helping so many people with their job application processes and preparing them for the employment space. He is also a TEDx speaker and has so many credentials that I would now give him a chance to introduce himself. Mr. Mark Smith, welcome back.
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Thank you, Roberta. It's always a pleasure to see you and it's always, always good to be back. So again, thank you for having me again. Truly a pleasure. Thank you for being here. There's so many of your credentials, as I said, I didn't want to butcher them any further. So please introduce yourself and give us a little bit of your background. Wow, I am a work in progress. Truly a work in progress. I've had the absolute pleasure and blessing to
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being post-secondary education, the majority of my professional career. I started out in post-secondary education back in 1999. I started out as just an admissions manager for a for-profit school that's still in existence today, University of Phoenix. Was blessed to continue to understand several different key components that I think transcended and still transcends today into for individuals who are going to work, individuals who are looking for work.
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as well as individuals who are seeking better communication. The first thing that I learned was active listening. That was so key for me. And that job taught me that because to get on the phone and listen to people and be able to go back and have concrete dialogue about what they were looking to do and how they were trying to change their career was essential. I had the opportunity to work with many, many individuals across the country in that role.
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I did so well, I got promoted to an admissions manager. So I tried to duplicate the efforts that I did and work with 15 other men and women inside the area and did well, I got nine of them promoted to manager. And as they got promoted, I continued to rise and became a regional director for the University of Phoenix and got a chance to travel across the country and teach and train on workforce development, education, active listening, follow through, one of the most important components in that aspect of it.
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But just like everything else, education kind of fizzled out. We all know how a lot of the for-profit schools went under. I tell the story all the time when I go speak about 2018, what happened to me. As a director of career development, I thought that I was doing well. I really was, for all intents and purposes, until I was told by my campus president on December 8, 2018 that our campus was closing their doors and are closing it that day.
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And we had to be the ones to go tell the students that they were no longer going to be able to come to the facility. It was at that point, you know, I've always said, I think you heard me say before comfort is a casualty of growth. So I got comfortable. I truly got comfortable in that role. I learned a lot, but I got comfortable. And that was the biggest motivator for me to look at other options and really realized what I believe I was finally called to do. I'm left there, went to work with the department of labor.
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in the state of Maryland became a re-employment facilitator, left that particular entity because it was a contract work and connected at the Center for Urban Families in Baltimore where I had three years of working with men and women, primarily re-entry, men and women who lost all hope. They thought that getting a job was not gonna be as easy as it was, but it truly, once they believed in themselves, then they were able to get it. And again, listeners, Roberta was kind enough to come in.
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every cycle of there to come in and speak to these men and women about the importance of interviewing and how to be prepared. And now I am, as you mentioned before, I am COVID-19 Workforce Development Economic Recovery Coordinator for Employee Prince George's. I did have an opportunity to do a TEDx talk. So again, that was probably one of the most rewarding opportunities to see some of the hard work and messaging that I've been putting together come to fruition.
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And it's done extremely well since, yeah, February, 2023. I've had over 5,000 views. So, which is amazing. Wow. Yeah, so pretty humble, honored and blessed to be able to share a message of growth, which is what the entitled track was and positivity to the world. And just a reminder, growth, you make these acronyms beautifully put. What did growth stand for for your tech talk? A gradual reminder, obstacles will test hope.
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There you go. That's growth. So all this illustrious career, it seems to me that like you have this common thread of serving people. Why do you specifically go for those types of careers? I you know, I believe that's what was in my DNA. I think that I found something that I truly had a passion for and
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You know, I tell the story all the time as well about, you know, I played sports in, in high school and in college, and I wasn't very vocal person. People, when I tell people I don't like, I really didn't like to speak, they look at me like, you are crazy the way you talk and the way you speak it in the right. I was a true introvert. I didn't say much, but get me in a football field, get me in the game. Man, I was one of the most talkative people out there, but I realized that, and my father helped me realize this as well as a few other mentors that.
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I've got a gift and I have to be able to share the gift. And it was all about how do you put yourself in a position to win and you don't regret doing some of the things that you do. And I remember one day being told that, I gotta really understand what the price of winning is about. And the price of winning is actually helping people get to the next level. As long as they're growing, you're growing. As long as they're being serviced and they're being helped, then that's something that's more rewarding.
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And that's what life is truly about is helping everybody get to the next level because it's enough levels for everybody to climb. This is something that I dream about every day. You know, I always said that passion makes you go to sleep at night, but purpose wakes you up every single morning. I know where I'm going to do. I know that I have a chance to change some lives, whether it's, you know, in the, when I started out in admissions, whether it's with Cineferba families, whether it's with the state of Maryland.
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teaching unemployment classes today when I'm having an opportunity to dialogue with business owners and individuals, men and women in Prince George's County. So it's just about being able to connect them to services and things that they normally wouldn't get. You and I talked before and it's a blessing to really have an opportunity to connect with people because we can help them really believe in themselves when they didn't believe in themselves before. And we might be the last person.
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You and I might be the last hope or breath of air that they can breathe from. And if we leave them better, then guess what? We may change the generation. That is so powerful, Mr. Smith. And first of all, the fact that that seed was planted in you at such a young age that when you serve, even you become better, which I think some of us, especially with the pressures of capitalism and since the pandemic, there's this.
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desperation that seems to take us away from that. And then secondly, yes, I was part of the program, as you said, I don't remember every single person who was on that Zoom screen each time you invited me. I remember a lot of them, but they will always remember you and they probably might remember some of the things that.
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I taught them to help them get the job and believe in themselves as you say, which is even more important. Because once you believe in yourself, there's so much you can do. And therefore now in Prince George's County, you do more than just helping them prepare for jobs. Would you like to tell us in more detail about that? Wow, I'd like to say in a nutshell, employee Prince George's the bridge, the bridge between the job seeker and the employer. I helped them with
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They're looking to retrain. They will have more career aspirations and they don't know how to get there. We can potentially assist them with the training that helps them get there. Every state has been awarded, back in COVID-19, every state was given ARPA, American Rescue Plan Funding. So there's ARPA funds in every state that has, and they can help individuals get to the levels of education as well as retraining that they need. Then there's also Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act. It's a federal...
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government program we owe up that every state has inside their American job centers. So having an opportunity to go meet with men and women, have an opportunity to talk to employers, have an opportunity to host and prepare and career friends. We just did a career fair yesterday at Prince George Community College through one of the demographics that we have. It's called Career Pathways for All. And what Career Pathways for All focuses on is that for individuals who live in Prince
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that English language is not their first language. It's their second language. So there's employers that are actually looking for many, many bilingual individuals. We have 48 employers. 48 employers show up yesterday. We had 22 resource partners. That's amazing. And we had 350 job seekers. 350 job seekers showed up. Many of them walked out of there getting hired the same day. About a month ago, we have another program called Pathways to Success.
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That program is kind of similar to the STRIVE program. It's men and women who are re-entry, who had blemishes, unfortunately, on their records. But federal government and local government agencies partnered with us to have a huge job fair at Palmer Park Community Center, and 200 and some members of the community came, and about a third of them got hired for federal, state, and local jobs. So the work that we're doing is bigger than a Mark Smith. It's bigger than...
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all the entities that's employee Prince George's, it's about servicing the community and giving men and women in our community a second chance. The one of the things that I was, been so adamant about that is that I talked to the men and women about, and I didn't strive, I do it now, as I talked to them about the price of winning. I have a simple question. And I just say, if you think the price of winning is too high, wait till you get the bill for regret.
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Oh, we'll say that again. If you think the price of winning is too high, wait till you get the bill for regret. And the bill for regret, Roberta, is often generational. It's often generational. Because we, our children, our grandchildren, do some of the same things that we do. They see us pushing. Absolutely. They see us pushing for success. They see us pushing for education. They see us never settling and consistently working on ourselves. Guess what?
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they're going to model that. They're going to emulate that. They're going to push for that. So I tell everybody, always remember, if you think the price of winning is too high, sorry, wait till you get that bill for regret. It is going to cost you and cost your family because it's often generational. That is so powerful. And that has such a huge impact if it goes not just beyond you and your children, but it does now. And here's the thing, and I'd like you to come back to comfort.
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A lot of the time when we are afraid to pay the price for winning, it's because we want to sit in the comfort or what we call the devil we know that we are already on. What is the problem with that? Man, I wrote an acronym fear. You remember that fear? Yeah. Evidence appearing real. But I also challenged everybody to look at it in a different way. Face everything and rise. Right.
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Fear is always the unknown. 99% of the time, fear comes from people who ever happen to make any excuses. George Washington Carver wrote, he said, 99% of all failures come from people who ever happen to make any excuses. So if we don't take the chance to believe in ourselves or trust ourselves or trust the process of who we are or what we're called to do, then we wind up shelter. We wind up in fear. We don't take the challenge of the unknown. And
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I challenge everybody and I do it all the time. When was the last time you didn't get through a situation that was placed in front? You haven't, if you walking, talking, breathing, listening, you got through whatever was faced your way, you got through the results may not have been what you wanted, but the results are what they should have been because it taught you something, at least it should have taught you something and it should have taught you what you need to do to compete, be successful and not be fearful. So why, why be scared?
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There's nothing to be scared of because you are, we were born and made to win. So let's go, let's win. Let's win all the time. Remember if you think the cost of winning is too high, but you get that bill for regret. Let's go. Let's win. When it comes to self-belief, when you think of all the students you've worked with, what is it that when they first come to you, they say, this is the reason I don't believe in myself.
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before you then start to change that mindset. You and I talked about this many, many times, your circle versus your cage. Oh, yeah. Your circle versus your cage. They are listening to individuals who really, and truthfully, don't want them to win. They don't want them to succeed. They want to keep them at that level to where, I don't want to say they have their foot on them, but they have their foot on them. They have them trapped to where they don't believe that they can be better or do anything better. I don't want to blame society,
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It also stigmatizes and says, if you don't have this, if you don't have this, if you don't have that, then you're labeled, you're put in the box, you're put away and you're being told that you can't do this and you can't do that. And the fact of the matter is, yeah, you have an opportunity to do it. It's just how much work are you willing to put into it? A week or two weeks ago, I just got back from Louisiana and I was at the National Association of Workforce Professionals Conference and I had an opportunity to speak and meet some great people.
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thought about it. I was sitting on the tarmac for a while because we had some plane issues. But anyway, as we finally took off, as we started to go up in the air, start to accelerate, I looked to my right of the plane and I saw grass. And I looked to the left of the plane and I saw dirt. It really made me think of how many times, and you guys talked about the transactional mindset versus the transformational mindset.
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You know, many times individuals that you're talking about believe that, you know, the grass is always greener elsewhere, whether it's in our personal life or whether it's in our professional life. Since we've been 100% transparent, the young Mark would say the same thing. I'm pretty sure I thought that way as well. But in all actuality, I try to tell people the grass will always be greener where you water. Somebody telling you that you can't do it, well, what are you going to do about? Are you going to give up? Are you going to push through? You're going to show yourself, not them.
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Because you're showing yourself, your battle is always within you. It's not with them, it's within you. You know, always say it takes a couple of things always to get to that level and to change that mindset. It always takes discipline to grow. It takes sacrifice to grow. And it takes patience, right? We live in a society that wants what it wants when he wants it. Now, now, now, give it to me, give it to me, give it to me. I need it now. I want it now.
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You can't rush the process. You can't rush success. You can't rush winning. It takes time. And you truly will see the benefits of it over time. And I always tell everybody when we have conversation that I've made a lot of mistakes in my life. But I don't look at them as mistakes. I look at them as the learning opportunities that Mark B. Smith needed to help be the person that he is today.
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And I challenge everybody to start to think that way. Don't think about the woe is me. Don't think about because somebody says you can't do something. If you make it up in your mind and you believe it in your heart, then you can do it. We all have, Mr. Smith, and I'm glad that you're helping us to reframe that in our minds and say, those are the lessons we needed at the time. When it comes to your circle and your page, we usually focus on
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you know, your five closest people, your friends, your family, whose voices you listen to. But over the course of how many years have we also been influenced by the cage that is social media? Yes, yes. When we count the five people nowadays, you find that even when I'm sitting in front of my five closest people, I'm on the phone on Instagram. So who is the closest to my friends that I'm sitting with? All the ones where?
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I'm checking on Instagram. What are your thoughts on that? We're a society that is cursed with social media. And again, I am guilty. I do the same. And I think social media has its purpose and its place. If you want to share a great idea and you want to share something that's impactful, I think that's one of the greatest places to show it. Because it does really give you an opportunity to let other people across the country do it. I mean, let's go back to COVID.
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for a second, had it not been for COVID, everybody knows that, I believe the stock prices for Zoom before COVID was right around $40 a share. $40 a share, try to get a stock of Zoom now. It's astronomical. The beginning of 2022 is almost $500, $600 a share. From $40, we all should have, right? We all be sitting pretty right now. So my point is again,
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Technology has changed, technology has evolved, and that was due to several different elements. So social media is not a bad place to be. It's just, you just need to utilize it for truly what it's worth. LinkedIn, for example, I would tell all of our men and women that that is one of the greatest networking platforms out there if you were looking for work, if you're looking for professional connections, those types of things. That's where you will go. You really don't want to play around with
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Facebook sometimes is kind of crazy. I'm not a huge TikTok person. I really don't, that's not for me. You know, it really isn't for me. I have a couple of people who are in business that their business has grown because of TikTok. So it's just about making sure that you're not getting caught up on yourself, number one. You're not getting caught up on what somebody says about you, because again, here we go again. You post something that you think is phenomenal, a greatest idea, something inspirational.
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and somebody come back and shoot you down, then what do you do? You get upset, you get frustrated, you wanna go banter back and forth. I mean, there was somebody, I can't remember what state it was, somebody, a lady shot and killed somebody else because of a post on social media. Yeah, that was just recently. It was just recently. So again, just identify who is really there. Tighten up your network, your circle.
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Yeah, you meet some great people. We were fortunate enough to connect through social media. So you do meet some great people, but also be guarded of who you are. But to do that, Roberta, you gotta know who you are, right? You gotta know who you are, and you gotta know your parameters. You can't let everybody into your, as I like to say, into your ballpark, because they're not for you. They will tear you down, they'll beat you up, and you'll go from there. And sadly, but reality says, sometimes you gotta learn that lesson the hard way.
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Once you learn it one time, I promise you, most of you will never do it again. So just be cautious of what you do, who you do it with to make sure that your circle stays tight and your cage stays where it needs to be away from you. Away from you, indeed. Like you said, there's so many positives about social media. Also, the way you present yourself, when you talk about LinkedIn, so the candidates that you work with at the workforce development in Prince George's in Maryland,
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the way they present themselves, knowing who they are, what are some of the tips that you've shared with them to say this is how you present yourself in order to network, in order to show people the best version of yourself basically. I would tell them to do something that I've always tried to do is work backwards. If you know you're in Resort, you know where you wanna go, you should always have walked in or be prepared to walk in and have an intellectual conversation.
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or how you're gonna get there. Everybody likes to have a plan. And sometimes it's okay not to have a plan, but to not have an end goal and not know that some of the steps that you need to happen to get there is a travesty. Then you gotta do your homework. And I'm gonna say, I've been pretty blessed that a lot of the men and women that I have come in contact with, they have an end goal. They know where they wanna go. They know the trainings that they need to take. They know they want, they need to get scrum master training. They know they want PMP.
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They know that they want to change their career and get into the medical field. They know that they want to get into cybersecurity. They've had some years of experience or been around computers enough, but know they don't have the credential. Kind of a different animal from where I was with Center for Urban Families. Nothing wrong with that because people have to start somewhere. And those individuals that I'm working with now, they were those individuals many, many years ago.
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They caught the train, got off at the appropriate stops, got the education experience that they need, got back on the train and kept going. So just a different animal. I would say that these, a lot of these men and women, they are for the most part, actually knock on wood, are holding their own selves accountable. So it's not like we have to hold them accountable all the time. If they know what needs to get done, they pretty much get it done so they can move forward with their lives.
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For sure. I mean, every organization has its purpose. And depending on what state of their lives the candidates are, every organization has its purpose in helping them. Like you said, they already know their goal. They just need help with resources to get there. And obviously they always hold themselves accountable. Mr. Smith, you invented the process.
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Would you like to tell us about the process? Wow. The easiest way to try to describe it to anybody is most of our listeners like a good cake, a nice, moist, fluffy piece of cake. A cake is just a cake. But one thing about a cake is it needs ingredients and it needs a heat source. My wife has put some cakes in the microwave sometimes and they came out pretty daggone good.
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Oh. So you need a heat source, right? Whether it's a microwave, oven, whatever it is. So, but the process is what you put in it. What you put in your cake is different than what I put in my cake. But it's consistent though, it has to have the heat source. So a process is the things that we all go through in life. We're born, we die, and we should be affecting somehow and sweating things inside of it. But we have those tough times, we have those challenges, we have
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in this thing we're doing called life, or in this journey, in this marathon of life. And the process was written and still is being written to help people and be a resource for individuals as they go through things that they go through. And I've been around a lot of speakers in my day, and I said, what can you do to be different, Mark, give people an opportunity to go back and carry what you say and apply it. And I said, well, hmm, maybe an acronym.
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Maybe if I tell them free, you know, I ask a lot of people, what does free mean to you? And I hear different stories. But when I wrote about it, I said free stands for finally releasing everyone's expectation. Oh, wow. Say that again, please. Finally releasing everyone's expectation. That is freedom for sure. That's free. That's free. Right. That's free. I wrote, you know, I thought about the men and women that affected me in my life. You know, most of them, they didn't make a lot of money.
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I tell a story about my very first job when I was 14 years old, clearing a path for a recreation park. Right. And I met a gentleman who was very, very hard on us and he worked us to death. And that helped me create the title legacy. Leaders exemplify greatness among choices over the years. So I wanted people to kind of take something and equate it to their own life. There's nothing wrong with doing life together. We do, we have meals together. We break bread together.
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individuals network together. So why not share situations and stories that we all have and the things that we all have to deal with? Things that we all are going to encounter because we all encounter situations. Notice I didn't say problems. We all encounter situations because there's always a resource for everything that we go through. There's always an answer for everything that we have. The problem comes is when we don't seek those resources. We don't look for those answers. We
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We have that pity party, we woe is me, and we just stop lying, comfort, get comfortable, right? We don't go anywhere, we stay right where we are and don't challenge ourselves to grow. So I wrote that, I started back in 2020. I started with a series called The Foundation. One of the best cast or best messages I ever wrote was the first one. It was raw, but it was entitled, Air. And I said that, as I stood for accountability, integrity, responsibility, and respect.
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That's a foundation. If you're not accountable, right? If you're not accountable to anybody, you're not accountable to yourself, what good is that gonna do? If you don't have integrity, right? Doing the things that you know you're supposed to do when other people aren't watching. As a hiring manager, I used to play tricks on people. When I would interview people of Roberta, I would take a ball of a piece of paper and I'd throw it on the floor right by the door. And I'd watch how many people would walk in and step over that paper and not pick it up and throw it away.
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My mindset in doing that was because if you can't take the time to pay attention to something that simple, how are you going to work for us? You see a piece of paper on the floor. That piece of paper could be an instrument. It could be a tool that an employee or customer could fall over, trip over and cost us money. And you didn't take the time to pick it up. So how about you just don't like literary like I am? So again, irresponsible. We can't afford that reason.
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Yeah, and responsibility. And when I talk about responsibility, a lot of people don't take responsibility for themselves or accountability for themselves or responsible for what goes on. I wrote the process because I am responsible for everybody out there, in my opinion, everybody out there that I come in contact with. I want to leave you with something. I want to give you a present that you can listen to for free and get it and apply it and change your generation. And the last one is respect.
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I live in Laurel, Maryland. I live 13 miles from Baltimore, 13 miles from Washington, DC, our nation capital. I saw this morning that DC, just this week alone, there was seven murders in DC. Seven. Where's the respect? Over what? You shoot and kill somebody for what? Why? It doesn't make sense. And my wife and I had this conversation the other day. How many murders do we have during COVID? Very little. How many robberies do we have during COVID? Very little.
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Are you saying the solution is for us to be locked down again because we don't seem to take responsibility for our actions? You said that. I didn't say it. I'm just saying that we need to rethink what we do as a culture. We need to rethink and reshape some of the mindset that we have. Are you finally releasing everyone's expectations? Are you leaving a legacy? What are you doing? How are you helping?
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everybody grow? How are you my brothers and sisters keeper if we're unfortunately harming each other? So I say all that to make sure that we need to really find a way to unify, to get better, and to get back to a world that actually is A, employed, B, winning, and B, creating opportunities that are generational for all of us to come. That's exactly what we need. Mr. Smith, in your podcast,
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We've talked about the acronyms, but another thing, the reason I love listening to them is your stories. Oh my goodness. First of all, why is your storytelling so good and why are stories so important? We don't like to be individuals. Humanistically, we don't like to be talked at, we like to be talked to. And telling a story gives an opportunity for individuals to talk to you, not at you. Most of the stories,
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that I have written, 99% of them are those that have affected my life. I've been a part of it or somebody that I know has been a part of it and I've witnessed it and can tell the story about it. But we've all gone through it. That's what's up the process. I always close with your why is greater than your situation, which is part of your process. If you don't know your why, there's a problem.
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There's something that's missing and you're not living life the way that you should be. We should be living life with no regrets. So every story that I tell or every story that's involved in any one of my podcasts and phone messages are stories that help individuals really equate to something that has happened to them or has happened to somebody that they know. It may not have been directly the same, but there's some simulants in something that's being said and something that's being done and or an outcome.
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that comes. And then I always try to find another story or something else to tie it in to make it fit the whole. I like to put in, wrap it up nice and pretty and give it back out to you and say, now refer to all these things. Here's A, here's B and here's C. There's something in each one of those that you can apply and utilize again to make you better and make you be able to deal with and get through the next day.
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And that's why they resonate so much because like you said, the situations sound parallel and you think this is what I've also gone through. And that's why we are so drawn to stories. I would like you to share with us your last words of wisdom, especially for those who are unemployed, unsure about what to do next, where they like it going. If they haven't established now why they are strong, why yet? What would you say to them?
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I would say don't settle, keep pushing. Now I've told this story before and you and I have talked about this particular story but I want your listeners to hear this story one more time and hopefully it makes sense to them. There was a daughter and a father, they went to a revival one day. And the little girl was 16 years old, she had just got her driver's license and she was so happy to have her license. After the revival ended, the dad said,
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gave her the keys and said, here you go, you can drive. And she was so ecstatic. Can you imagine 16 years old being able to drive? So she got in the car and she started driving, started driving home, beautiful days thus far. Driving, driving, nothing was going wrong. All of a sudden it started to rain. And she looked over at her daddy, her father said, daddy, daddy, do you want me to pull over? He said, no, baby, just keep driving. So she continued to drive a little further and the rain continued to start to come. This time it started coming down a little harder and a little harder.
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And she looked over at her father and she said, daddy, you want me to pull over? And she said, no, baby, I want you to keep on driving, keep on driving. So as they can continue to go up the street on the highway, the rain continued, it started coming down even harder. Cars, trucks started pulling over and she was in tears at this point. He just grabbed her hand and said, no, honey, I know you're gonna ask me, just keep on driving. So they drove for about another half a mile and then all of a sudden the rain stopped. He looked at his little girl and told her, go ahead, baby, you can pull over.
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So she pulled over. He said, I want you to get out the car. So he got out the car. She's still visibly shaking. She got out the car. He looked at her and said, hey, baby, so where's all the cars that pulled over in the storm? And she paused. He said, let me ask you another question. What do you see? She said, I don't see anything. He said, let me ask you again, what do you see? Where are all the cars and trucks that pulled over? She said, they're still in the storm. He said, that's exactly what I want you to remember. Every time you pull over.
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you stay in your storm. But if you keep pushing, you keep driving, you keep pushing on through, you'll eventually get through your storm. So my message to the listeners is that you're going to endure rain. You're going to do a job loss. By rain, I mean any all parts of life, relationship problems, job losses, career failures, problems with your family, problem with your children, all those types of things. But you collectively have to keep driving. You have to keep pushing because that will not be forever.
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everything in life has an expiration date and you will get through your storm and turn and will never think twice about it. It will be used as a reference that you can share with somebody else to help them get through their storm as well. Words of wisdom from Mr. Mark V. Smith, the coordinator of COVID-19 Workforce Development Economic Recovery Program.
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at Prince George's County in Maryland. Mr. Smith, before you go to things, one, please give us details of where and when we can listen to your podcast, The Process. Well, they can go to any one of the platforms, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Anchor, TuneIn. They're all there. Just look under Mark Smith, The Process. You can go to my website, theprocessmarksmith.com.
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At the top of it, if you click on any one of the links, there's links to my social media page, there's links to YouTube, LinkedIn, all the links. You can send me an email. If you have questions, comments, concerns, don't hesitate to give me email. I should mean email. You can go to the TEDx website, type in Mark Smith, growth, and then that TEDx talk will actually come up. Again, I am actually working on another one that is going to potentially...
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country for wishing in the first part of 2024. And we're really gonna break down that word free. Finally releasing everyone's expectation on stage. Finally releasing everyone's expectation. That level of freedom is what basically we all dream about. I asked for two things, but you've already given me, because I was gonna ask for the website as well. So theprocessmarksmith.com. Smith is the website. And you can email me at mark at the process, marksmith.com.
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Okay, the process marksmith.com. Always, it's always a pleasure to have a conversation with you. So much to learn, so much growth from listening to your wisdom. Thank you so much, Mr. Mark Smith, for being here today. Thank you for having me again. It's always a pleasure to speak with you and keep doing the remarkable work that you're doing. You are changing lives and leaving a legacy.
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Thank you so much. That means a lot to me. Thank you for the kind words. Thank you for joining the Speaking and Communicating podcast once again. If you have a guest that you think would be a great fit for the show, please email me and my contact details are on the show notes. The Speaking and Communicating podcast is part of the Be Podcast Network, where there are many other podcasts that support you in being a better leader and becoming the change you want to see.
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To learn more about the Bee Podcast Network, go to beeepodcastnetwork.com. Don't forget to subscribe, leave us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify, and stay tuned for more episodes to come.