Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Hi, everyone.

I'm Roberta.

And this week, I'm back with Mark Smith.

He is a motivational speaker, a podcaster and a radio show host.

Today, he is going to share with us what it's going to take for us to be able to overcome the challenges we face on a daily basis and how to thrive in the lives that we live.

And before I go any further, please help me welcome Mark Smith.

Hi, Mark.

Good afternoon, Roberta.

It's a pleasure to be here with you today.

I'm grateful that you're here with us today.

You said earlier that your coaches, when you were young and playing sports, used to pick you to motivate your teammates.

Tell us about that.

Yeah, I don't know why.

I really don't.

I mean, I thought I was just the average guy.

And, you know, when you play sports, it's all about the team.

It's about doing what needs to be done for everybody to succeed.

But my coaches will come to me and say, you know what, Mark, I need you.

What I need you to do is I need you to be our coach on the field.

I need you to be the one to help motivate everybody else inside that huddle to get the guys to believe that they can push forward and do what they need to do.

I did.

I just would tell them, hey, guys, you need to push forward.

That we can do this.

We need to rally around each other.

We need to be supportive of each other.

And most of all, we can't give up.

We have to continue to find it within ourselves.

Get transcended in everything that I did in life after that.

For them to spot that in you at such a young age, they must have already seen something really special.

So is that the reason that later in your life, which is what you're doing now, that you became a motivational speaker?

Well, I don't think I chose that career.

I think that career chose me.

It just became the way that my careers have turned out.

I left high school and college and started in the world of education.

I started out as an admissions representative at University of Phoenix, and actually wrote a story in the series The Process about that journey.

But I did, I would work at six o'clock in the morning, six o'clock in the morning, at three PM in the afternoon on the phone, listening to people talking to them about the power of education, what it does to change their lives.

From that point, I mean, I met some amazing, some dynamic people and it just kept going.

I had the opportunity to listen to their stories, tell them my stories.

And pretty soon it got to the point where people were calling, requesting, hey, can we speak to Mark Smith?

We want to talk to Mark Smith because he has uplifting words about life and what he does.

So continued to be an evolution in my life.

So that isn't just why you for the job, but actually the way you made them feel at the end of the call.

You and I talked about it a little bit earlier.

I guess I realized that I had the power to leave people bitter or better.

We have the power to leave people bitter.

I had the power to leave them better.

So it's our choice.

So early in life, Roberta, I had to go back and really look about how I was truly living my life.

And there's an old saying when I teach and I talk about the workforce development, I use the acronym WIFL, what's in it for me.

And a lot of times as I was growing up, I had to think about, you know, I was living life just like that.

What was that person or what was this entity, what was it going to do for me?

What was my benefit coming in?

But as I grew older, I don't say older, as I grew wiser, right?

We don't get older.

As I get wiser, I realized that I was living life transactional, meaning again, what's in it for me.

What am I going to get?

Absolutely.

But then as I got wiser again, I realized that that's not the way life is supposed to be.

Life is supposed to be lived transformational.

So that's when I looked at exactly what I was doing, what I was saying and making sure that that was going to be something that is going to help somebody get to the levels of which they truly wanted to get to.

So transactional to transformational.

It's interesting you say that because I find that a lot of us, we do this, what am I going to get thinking it's going to fulfill us?

Why doesn't it?

I think because society teaches us to be selfish.

We see from social media, what do we see in social media?

We see people getting guns.

We see a high profile celebrity in the five star restaurants with the huge vehicles, with the mansions everywhere.

And we think, why can't we deserve that?

And really and truthfully, life is simplistic.

We convoluted.

We want that stuff.

And that stuff is really, honestly, is not for us.

I always talk about my life journey, everybody.

And I'm 57 years old.

I'm proud that I have plenty of friends who didn't make it to my age.

40 years of my life, I used a lot of what I call stinking thinking.

And when I talk about the transactional aspect of things, I wasn't at peace with myself.

To imagine going into 40 years of your life, not really having the ability to sleep in peace is a long time.

And it's a lot of life lessons that you have to learn going through that path.

So I was the one that wanted to keep, you know, the old saying, try to keep up with the Joneses.

And I don't think just for anyone listening, I don't think we are knocking, being ambitious or wanting more for your life.

That's not what this is.

But there's something that when we become obsessed with getting the outside stuff and thinking it's gonna fill whatever hole we fill inside, that's where the missing link is.

It's stuck.

At the end of the day, it's just stuck.

We all see it.

We've seen people who are massive.

We've seen people who let it go to waste as well.

It's what makes you happy.

At the end of the day, you have to be happy with him.

I do an exercise and we were talking just a minute ago.

I do an exercise with the young men and women in Baltimore and I ask them, what is the most valuable piece of furniture in your house?

And I hear my bed, my refrigerator, my kev.

Some of the men tell me my big screen TV, right?

I tell them, I understand what you're talking about, guys.

But when we break down, I said, no, the most valuable piece of furniture in your house should be your mirror.

Because that's where you're gonna really form who you truly are.

And you can run from a lot of people, but you can't run from yourself.

So your self-portrayal when you first wake up, when you first walk out of there, is what you're gonna carry and what you're gonna impact people with throughout the course of the day.

Again, we have that option to leave you bitter or leave you better by own demeanor.

That mirror wine is so powerful when I think about it, because you know how sometimes, which I've done over the course of my life, is you always think that if I just move to a new area, I'm going to run away from my problems.

And wherever you are, they're just there with you.

Yeah, sometimes moving and starting in a new era and starting a new life and living whatever was behind that you didn't gel with anymore, it can work to a certain extent.

But those things inside of you that you thought you were living behind, like you said, the mirror, you're always there with yourself.

And it's tough.

I've done it.

I mean, I've changed locations.

I've made from Ohio to Arizona to California to Washington, DC area, which I'm currently residing at.

Again, different reasons, job opportunities.

One, I got a divorce and became remarried.

So they were all different reasons.

What I hope everybody realizes, there is nothing wrong with relocating.

Sometimes you have to get that fresh air and you have to reinvent yourself by relocating certain places.

But don't forget, there are some things that you should take from where you were, that you should learn from.

That definition of insanity, doing the same things over and over again, expecting different results.

Just make sure that you're taking the step to progress.

I always say, change is comfort is a casualty of growth.

So you always want to make sure that you're growing no matter what you're doing, no matter what your outlook on life is.

Growth is so important to make sure that you're whole.

And speaking of fresh starts, one of the things that can be a fresh start as well is who you surround yourself with and the influence that they have on you.

Is this still resonating?

Are these relationships still nourishing me the way that I expect to be nourished as I go on a different...

I can't agree with you more.

I mean, I ask the question a lot of times when I do speeches.

Raise your hands if you feel that everybody leans on you for everything.

Are you the smartest one in the bunch?

Raise your hand.

A lot of people raise your hand.

Yeah, I'm the smartest one.

I'm the smartest one.

I say, you need to change your circle.

You don't have a circle, you have a cage.

You have a cage.

Because how can you expect to grow yourself internally?

You need to be tapping into some other energy and surrounding yourself with other individuals because how can you grow?

You can't grow with you trying to fix everybody else's problems.

You can't do it.

You need to make sure that you are getting energy, getting support, getting knowledge from others all the time.

That's a tough lesson that I like to learn as well.

As a young adult, not all of the friends are friends.

Not all of the people who are designed to be good for you are good for you.

Sometimes it hurts to say, but sometimes that's family as well.

Family blood does not identify your support.

It's not always your best support system.

So it's always about learning to make sure that you're holistic inside and out.

I know it fits the ego.

Listen, we all want to sound smarter than everybody around us.

It's the human in us.

But like Richard Branson said, he's a billionaire because he hires people who are smarter than him.

So if you go up with people who are smarter than you, it's gonna take you to the next level.

That's right.

That's right.

I believe President Obama made a comment like that as well.

He said, how did you pick your staff?

He said, because I want people that are smarter than me.

I don't know everything.

I'm not gonna profess to know everything, but the people around me are the ones that are experts in those areas.

I rely on them.

So take us through the process.

Well, the process is, it's a journey.

It is truly, it's a lifelong journey of things that everybody goes through, from again, losing a job, losing family, losing career, changing careers.

But it started back in 2018 when I lost my job.

Let me back up.

My story is something that I've write about a lot.

I say that change is hard at first, messy in the middle, but rewarding at the end.

Say that again, please.

Change is hard at first, messy in the middle, but rewarding at the end.

So back in 2018, I was a Career Development Specialist for a for-profit school.

So my job was to help young men and young women get jobs.

So I would sit down, help them with their resume.

We'd have dialogue.

I would connect with employers.

I did a lot of outreach on things to help employer bring employers in.

In December of 2018, I am just coming back inside my office.

I call it the money light.

When anybody has their office, they see that red light on, that voicemail light, which means, oh, OK, somebody's calling to request the services of one of my graduates.

So I did.

There were two very good calls.

A doctor out of John Hopkins Hospital and a chief engineer from a major manufacturing plant, Deetson Watson, in the Baltimore area.

They wanted electricians, and John Hopkins wanted medical assistants.

So I'm thinking, great.

I'm just continuing to build alliances and relationships.

My campus president came and knocked on my door and said, Mark, I need to see you in my office.

Like most of us, when we get that type of knock, we think something's wrong.

What did you do?

Oh, you want to see me in my office?

And he had that stern look.

When he walked in, everybody else was in there.

He said, we are closing our door.

The school was closing, but we're closing today at five o'clock.

And more importantly, you need to go tell.

Nothing, nothing.

You need to go tell the student today.

So I found myself wrapped up in a maze of what am I going to do?

Well, this is the lowest.

I've never lost a job before.

I quit jobs.

Jobs didn't quit me.

I never, that had never happened to me.

So I went through a transition in December, because like I said, it was right before Christmas.

So I went through a transitional time.

I'm thinking, what am I going to do?

I'm not a young man.

And I know from teaching interviewing skills and teaching what the market, the man of the market is, some people, and there is such thing as workforce discrimination.

So they may look at an elderly gentleman and say, he's good, but we can't pay him.

We can't pay him what he's worth.

There's no way.

So I had to make decisions of whether, what do I truly want to do with my life?

And my wife encouraged me to sit back and fulfill some more of my dreams that I always did.

I'm a writer.

I jot her down.

I have thousands and thousands of pieces of paper and tablets of things that I've written down or ideas.

And she said, you need to get that out there.

And I said, okay, maybe you're right.

Maybe it's time to be different, to embark on what one of my dreams will fulfill my dream for a change.

Started writing the very first episode that I written about and recorded was something that I said, we need a foundation.

All of us, no matter what we go through in life, there has to be base camp, there has to be home, there has to be something that keeps us centered.

So I said, I'm gonna do this, but I'm gonna use acronym.

So the first acronym that I wrote about in the very first series of The Process, which was called The Foundation, I wrote is called AIR.

When I told her that, she said, that's pretty generic, what can you do to make it different?

I said, how about I add another R, A-I-R-R.

A-I-R-R stands for accountability, integrity, responsibility and respect.

That is a foundation of what we all need to have as we move forward.

You have to be accountable.

See, I could have blamed the system.

I could have said that these individuals knew they were closing the door.

They could have came to me and told me what was going on, but I had to take accountability because I allowed myself to be stagnant in that world and stagnant inside that entity to make sure that nothing else, I wasn't growing.

I was stuck right there, integrity.

And we all know that integrity is about doing the things that you know you should be doing even when nobody's watching.

Doing what you said you will.

If your word is going to mean anything, if people are going to trust you, can we just go back to the era where people do what they say they will do?

Absolutely, I agree.

One of the things that my wife said to me, she told me, she said, Mark, one of the reasons why I fell in love with you is because the things that you do for the elderly.

I will never let an elderly person carry their bags.

I will stop.

That's the way you grew up.

We used to stop playing on the street, go to the bus and the grandma's got groceries and she didn't carry a thing and we'll take them to her house and then go back home.

That's right.

So the integrity piece, so accountability and integrity, then responsibility.

We always say a lot of times, and I used to use the old adage, not my monkey, not my circus, meaning it's not my problem.

But the fact of the matter is, everything that goes on inside of society, I'm responsible for the young men and women in Baltimore, Maryland.

I am.

I'm responsible to help them make some change inside their lives.

See, some people don't want to take that responsibility.

It is mine because I want my grandchildren to see a better world.

I want my great grandchildren one day to see a better world.

So it becomes all of our responsibility.

Get off the couch.

And the last and most important thing which our society is failing on is respect.

Accountability, integrity, responsibility and respect.

We don't respect each other.

We may not agree on our thought processes or what we truly believe in.

But I owe you that respect to have your opinion, not get mad, not go get a gun and shoot, not vandalize your property.

Take the opportunity to listen to your word and what you're talking about and just agree to disagree.

That's fine, that's your thought process.

Isn't this freedom of speech, country?

But it's respect, but it's respect.

Respect each other's different opinions.

That's why I think social media does that in the sense that there's a lot of algorithms and money being made in people disagreeing and trolling, just having these fights, these computer keyboard fights.

It's a mess, it truly is a mess, it is a mess.

So I did that, I wrote each one of the series, episodes, there's six different messages.

So I went on after I finished the foundation, I did The Perfect Storm.

And it's funny, that got us, I launched that right at the same time COVID hit, back in March of 2019.

I launched that.

When The Perfect Storm was coming?

Perfect Storm.

But again, if you think about it, this is truly The Perfect Storm.

It gave people an opportunity.

See, the playing field became level then.

But the tough thing was what we talked about and I wrote a message on it about your mayor.

So you have to look at yourself then and take a self-assessment of where you were in life.

Because things slowed down.

We had nothing but time.

Nothing but time to truly work on ourselves.

The things we thought were secure, were no longer secure.

That's right.

That's right.

So you had time to really work on things.

And I wrote a message in there entitled, Growth.

And that stands for gradual reminder, obstacles will test hope.

Growth, gradual reminder, obstacles will test hope.

Growth.

So everything that we go through in life, sometimes we think it was a bad thing.

It really was.

This was an obstacle that was testing your hope.

And you came out stronger even after you got through it.

We are our track record, Roberta, of getting through things in our life is 100%.

If you're listening to me, you're still here.

The result may not have been what you wanted, but you got through.

That was an obstacle that tested your hope.

So your hope is stronger.

The human spirit is tough to kill.

You just have to remain vigilant in what you want to do.

So I moved from that one to work after The Perfect Storm.

I wrote a series called Where Do We Go From Here?

Then I wrote another one called Why Not Me?

And then I finished one called Procrastination and the Thief of Time.

And now I'm working on a series called If I Only Knew Then What I've Known That.

So there's been six-

Looking to your youngest now, yes.

So there's been six messages so far of 10 that are coming.

Once the 10th one is complete, I'm gonna wrap it all up, put it in a book form, put it on a shelf for everybody to have an opportunity to go back and take a look at.

So that is the rest of the process.

Yeah, I'll be so much looking forward to that.

That's the thing is that I'm 46 now and I say I love the girl I was in my twenties, but anything that happened, it would shake me.

Because you think the world is going to end.

You started adulthood.

If something doesn't go according to plan, you think my life is over.

Now it's like, okay, oh, this is awesome.

Okay, let's see what else is here.

I'm not saying everything is smooth nowadays, even when things happen, but I'm not as shaken as I used to be.

Absolutely.

You're mature.

I teach everybody when we talk, when we have conversation, the most powerful word that I wish I would have grasped as a young man.

And my dad used to tell me all the time, he said, Mark, I want you to remember this word.

The word is next.

Next.

No matter what happens, if you adapt that type of mentality of next, then you'll forget about it and you'll move on.

Cause it's just an emotion.

Everything we're going through is emotional.

And we all know emotions are temporary.

They all pass.

That thing is just temporary.

They all pass.

Macca, thank you so much for taking us through the process.

And before we close, all the wisdom you shared with us.

Where can we get more information?

Please share with us where we can find you on social media.

Yeah, you can.

You can find me on Facebook.

I'm under Father and Friends, as well as that's on the business page, Father and Friends, as well as under Mark V.

Smith.

Also on Instagram, under Within Your Process.

I'm on LinkedIn.

In the process on Instagram.

Mark Smith on LinkedIn, as well as you can find me under Mark Smith, The Process on YouTube.

And of course, you can always, always connect with me on my website, which is theprocessmarksmith.com.

Reach out to me, send me an email.

Let me know how I can help you.

Again, my job is to leave you better, never better.

Let's review those two acronyms again.

AIR with the two R's.

That's accountability, integrity, responsibility and respect.

Growth is gradual reminder.

Obstacles will test hope, growth.

Mark, it's been a pleasure.

Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for having me.