Mark Pollard: Brand Strategist on Authenticity, Living with Urgency & Leading a Life That Turns You On | Be Yourself Podcast

Mark Pollard

Brand strategist, author of Strategy Is Your Words and founder of Sweathead — on authenticity, the personality crisis, how to find your verbs, and why the best advice is to lead a life that turns you on

Watch on YouTube Mark's Website

43 minutes

Brand Strategy · Authenticity · Self-Discovery · Urgency

Listen to this Episode

About the Guest

Mark Pollard — Brand Strategist, Author, Founder of Sweathead

A brand strategist and author of Strategy Is Your Words who ran strategy teams at industry-defining agencies including Leo Burnett and Big Spaceship, and now travels continuously teaching brand-strategy masterclasses from Lagos to Jakarta

He founded Sweathead, a global community for strategists, built on the belief that squandered creative potential is one of the worst things you can do with your time — and runs a travel YouTube channel exploring what it looks like to live with urgency and curiosity

What He Does

brand strategist, speaker and author of Strategy Is Your Words — ran strategy at Leo Burnett and Big Spaceship, now teaches masterclasses globally and leads Sweathead

Core Belief

strategy is an informed opinion about how to win — most people in strategy don't know what the word means; clarity of language isn't a soft skill, it's the whole game

Sweathead Community

a global community for strategists that started as a simple attempt to help people find their gang — now one of the most active strategy communities in the world

On Living Fully

a friend told him it's nice to lead a life that turns you on — he made that his operating principle: not hedonism, urgency; always arriving somewhere new

Key Quotes

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a friend said to me that it's nice to lead a life that turns you on.

Mark Pollard

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strategy is an informed opinion about how to win.

Mark Pollard

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what are your verbs? What are you doing when you feel alive?

Mark Pollard

Full Transcript

BTW: This episode of the Be Yourself Podcast is produced by Beverly Media. Also on the show:
Neal Foard — 30 Years of Advertising on Storytelling, Persuasion & Human Connection →

0:00 Episode Teaser & Intro

Sergey Hi guys, this is Sergey and Be Yourself podcast. Today my guest is Mark Pard who is a brand strategist and author of the book it's called strategy is your words. Mark when we were uh recording these podcast was traveling Asia he was giving master class on brand strategy. So we touched a lot on uh that on the branding part of things and the community that he built his podcast and also his traveling channel. Mark travels the world hangs out with the locals to explore their culture in general. I really loved Mark's wife and I think you will enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed it. So have fun. Today my guest is Mark Pard who's a brand strategist, a speaker and author of strategy is your words. He ran strategy teams in industry defining agencies like Leo Bartnett, big spaceship and now he also runs a community for strategists called sweat hat.

Mark Hey, this is all true. And what I love about getting to know yourself is it always reminds me of this Alan Watts quote where he says uh trying to understand yourself is like biting your own teeth. I think he stole that from a Japanese monk, but it's still pretty good in English.

Sergey Yeah, words. I mean, we'll talk a lot about words because your book is about words. Uh I know that you're on tour right now in Asia giving master class for brand strategist. Am I correct?

Mark Yeah. It's just funny when I hear the word tour and masterclass and I use those words, but when other people use them, it sounds it sounds so fancy, but basically I travel to places and I teach.

1:52 Challenges in Marketing Today

Sergey Um, let's right off the bat, let me ask you to identify the biggest challenges that people face right now as far as creating and following a strategy that will help them create, you know, a powerful brand.

Mark Okay. So, we'll just you just lobby in like a large question for me to start with. I Well, first of all, most people don't know what the word strategy means. They don't know what brand strategy means. They don't know what a brand is. But a lot of people and people who have these jobs actually uh think that they know what they're doing and then I'm in rooms and I literally ask people about the words they use all the time and most people don't know how to define the words they use all the time such as strategy, insight, idea, etc. So I think that's pretty big. I think that's a pretty big issue there. I think there's also been a lot of skepticism towards brand over the past 10 to 15 years with the rise of the performance marketer, the growth hacker, the people who are very leftrained, although that's a little bit of a false uh idea there, but people who are very leftrained and who are very suspicious of people who are more abstract uh more conceptoriented. So I think there's a big cultural issue uh within business and then I think a lot of people who talk about this actually don't know what they're talking about.

3:09 What is a Strategy and a Brand

Sergey So what should we or do you have a good definition for us strategy and brand? Can you define those?

Mark So for me the word strategy the way I define it is that it's an informed opinion about how to win. And the way that I think about brand is it's not that it's a pure definition, but to me a brand is a public spectacle that grabs a little bit of your memory so that in the future when you're thinking about what to buy, maybe you think about a brand or a few brands that have been uh the public spectacle that have been advertising to you.

Sergey We have a really famous brand agency here in Ukraine and their uh owner, the founder says that the brand is a transaction in exchange for emotion. What do you think of that?

Mark Transaction in exchange for emotion. Maybe I don't think it's one of those definitions that is hard to disprove because you can say that everything is emotional, right? And therefore at some point with a brand you pay therefore there's a transaction. So it's it's an abstract definition. I can see where it comes from. Is it useful? A transaction for emotion. I think it's useful enough. Yeah, it's useful enough. Like I'm not pedantic. I'm happy for everybody to have their own definitions. Whatever works because often when we're defining things like this, especially if you speak in public, you're trying to get attention and sometimes you're just trying to dislodge bad ideas or ideas that don't work. So when other people define things in a way that's useful to them, I just need to think, do those words make sense to me? Is it useful to them? Would it be useful to me? If it is, great.

4:52 Personality Crisis in Men

Sergey you said something really interesting u on on podcast that you did with Chris Chris Doe uh four month ago. I think you said that wherever you go in the world, you notice a crisis of personality, something of this kind that people struggle to be interesting, especially young men, which was really interesting that you you you mentioned that. So, is that the case? And why is that?

Mark So, I mean there's a few other thoughts that connect to this and it just it depends how personal you want to get, but I I realized in the past year or two that I prefer to spend time with women. I do have a lot of male friends. I have a lot of old male friends. Good male friends. Who? Yeah. Who's so normal? So normal. I know a lot of dudes. I know so many men. I'm going to go. There's just men trying to break into my door right now. I just know so many. I'm super straight though, which is just what a super straight guy would say. So normal for a straight guy to say he's super straight. No, but I realized like, you know, I grew up with a single mom and a younger sister and had a lot of female friends as a teenager and male friends, but and you know, I spent time in pretty male dominated environments like in martial arts and hip-hop and uh those things as well, but I think I think I prefer a little bit of like a lady who's a bit masculine uh and not a princess. And then guys who can be a bit sensitive and intelligent and guys who can be bit sensitive and intelligent, that's pretty rare. There are more women who are a little bit guyish than there are guys who are a bit sensitive and intelligent. And so that's probably where some of my comments come from. And then when I've traveled, sometimes I'm with guys. I'm like, "What do you want to talk about?" They could be strategists as well. I've had a few a few interactions where I'm like, "Guys, you wanted to meet up. There five of us here right now. Half of you on your phones. It's 6:30 p.m. What do you want to talk about?" And you know, that that's where some of my observations come from. Let let alone also growing up around youth soccer in the US and seeing how a lot of guys interact and how some people have personalities but it's a risk to have a personality at high level sport in high level sport in the US as well.

7:04 The Benefits of a Tough Environment

Sergey Well, you see, uh, my podcast is called Be Yourself, and I've had a lot of different transformations in my life, you know, with and now even now with the war, we're all becoming, you know, different in a way. Um so and I I kind of understand that maybe with my life experience it's kind of easy to differentiate myself speaking of personal brand because this is what we dissected with Chris with him being an immigrant which was instantaneously something that made him different right in the US. So and we were talking about personal brand and if you know if a crisis or or of some tough beginning can help you in building you know a distinct personal brand. So do you have any thoughts on on this matter?

Mark Oh yeah I look I wouldn't be here if I didn't grow up in a in a family with a single mom and a younger sister with some trauma around which is not necessarily my stuff to talk about right now. I mean, I can probably get into it a little bit, but uh you know, I'm a writer. I was writing from a young age. My dad left when I was six or seven. He's a lovely guy. I still remember the day that he left. I was writing and probably from that age, if not a little bit earlier and then into my teens, I used to write a lot of raps, a lot of sad poetry. Uh I had a short phase in my teenage years where I was feeling a bit suicidal. like cut my arms as well and go just trying to feel something and never really felt that I belonged anywhere because I just felt like my family fell apart. I didn't belong in my family. This is me as a teenager, right? It's not necessarily how I would think about it now, but in my head I was like, I I kind of belong in a family cuz I don't know if I really have one. And so I'd be in rooms uh in all kinds of different places. That's one of the things that I grew up with that's an advantage. I was in a lot of rooms with a lot of people from a lot of different countries constantly. never really had like just one group. I do a little bit and so yeah, if that didn't happen to me and you know like in the US etc. I think it's weird for people to hear a white middle-aged white guy talk like this but that was my reality growing up.

Sergey Yeah. So now we can say that maybe the trauma actually is not that not not all bad. I mean we would prefer not to have it, right? But it seems like difficult times make for strong people.

Mark Yeah, I mean there are a lot of famous European writers who were in concentration camps and came out and and did certain things. It it's it's a tough one because like I spent a lot of time in Africa and Latin America in the past year, Africa more recently and I met people with just just amazing and crazy crazy stories. I mean stories like the ones that you you're probably very familiar with in Ukraine, you know, like I met a I met this lady. She's a model. she's just started to do some stuff with the UN. She was a child bride when she was 16. She got moved between countries, was kind of married to a guy 20 years older than her. Like that's just like one little story. And in Africa, those stories are really, really common, except for the redemption and succeeding later, which is what she's trying to do. And so, you know, I feel a little bit self-conscious when I talk about the things that I grew up around. And the I don't know if you are familiar with this actually, but there's a thing called the ACES scorecard. A CES. It stands for adverse childhood experiences scorecard. And so what they've been trying to do for the past 10 or so years is they've been trying to understand people's exposure to difficult things, adverse childhood experiences. And you can go through the scorecard. It gives you a score out of 10. It's not that you want to be a high achiever, but it could be that there's, you know, a parent with an addiction in the family. There could be violence in the family, divorce, etc. And it it helps some of us understand that maybe one or two massively traumatic things didn't happen, but perhaps there were tens and tens of things that did and that affects us in a certain way. For example, this has been on my on my mind a lot for the past week or so. I mean, it's always on my mind, but I can be on stage in front of a thousand 10,000 people, I'm fine. But if I have to book a hotel or a flight or do something that's like really simple, I get I freeze. I get like really anxious about and so that to me is probably some kind of response to whatever I've been around. Um but I just wanted to share that because sometimes you see people in public and you don't realize the the little things that can be difficult for them as well.

11:39 Alex Honnold's Taipei 101

Sergey Yeah. The cold feet. Have you have you seen this amazing um thing that this rock climbber uh Alex Hnold just did? He climbed this building in Taiwan and I was you really fascinated how he with his bare hands with no ropes or anything and I was chatting with Chad GPD like how in the world doesn't he feel fear and uh it it educated me that actually he does feel fear but you know his amygdala is not activated when he's, you know, standing in at the top of whatever. He actually his prefrontal cortex for some reason is more active and he evaluates how to rationally behave in this situation. So, it's interesting, you know, it ties up ties into what we just talked about emotions, you know, that people are emotional creatures. Maybe not so much for some,

Mark but no. Yeah, true, true, true, true. I mean, there are people who probably don't experience like it's not that they don't experience emotions. We're probably talking about one of the big five personality traits, OC E. I think we're talking about the N, which is feeling dark emotion, right? And maybe being sensitive, which is sort of connected. But yeah, like some people can be really, really brave and really strong in ways that other people like I can never do that. But then there could be really simple things that freak them out that other people like what is happening there? Yeah. So yeah, it's interesting.

13:23 How Mark Found His Professional Calling

Sergey Okay. So my podcast uh is about people finding their spark in life in uh you know not following some common or uh traditional route. So you obviously fall your story seems like to fall under this umbrella. Uh can you tell us a little bit how did you discover something that you wanted to tie your life to to something that you love professionally?

Mark Yeah, look I think I think it comes a little bit from you know just feeling like an outsider growing up. It's really common for entrepreneurs to feel that they're an outsider and that word outsider has it has different meanings. there's like an academic meaning and sometimes that connects to uh like indigenous people in their own country who feel like outsiders. But for me, I just never felt like I belonged in places and didn't want to be in places. You're from depressed when I was 16. Yeah, I'm from Australia. I'm from Australia. Everyone's like Australia's amazing. It is and I was really bored there. But it's amazing. Yeah. And if you are happy just being highly taxed and having to earn a lot of money but feeling safe and having good healthcare and education, fine, go to Australia. It's a beautiful place. Some of the best beaches in the world. Um, and beautiful people. So for me, the threads were I got taught how to read and write very young. I'm very I'm very verbal. I like to write and writing is something I've done since I was younger than most people. My mom taught me how to read and write at a very very young age. And then growing up in my, you know, four or five, six years old, I'm sending postcards to lots of people. I'm sending birthday cards to lots of people. I'm writing three-page, four-page letters to my auntie and to pen pals and all kinds of people. So, I was always very writing oriented in my teens. Um, you know, started to review music for school newspapers or school magazines. And then when I was about 18 or so, I started to make websites about hip-hop, about underground hip-hop, graffiti artists, DJs, breakdancers, MC's. Uh, very bad website, but I used to love to do the interviews. And within a couple of years, I I had ended up setting up the first fullcolor hip-hop magazine in the southern hemisphere. And, uh, for some reason, this this friend of mine, who's now a friend, but back then, I didn't know him. He gave me his radio show. It was the main hip-hop radio show in Sydney. He gave me his radio show. I was 20 years old. I had no idea what I was doing and boy could I do that better now. But that was sort of the first phase and then I was also working at agencies. So making magazines, working in advertising agencies and then moved to the US in my early 30s, 5 years in corporate America. I didn't like it and I just kind of went back to what I used to do. You know, instead of radio, I did podcasts. Instead of publishing a magazine, I published a book. Instead of running an online message board, I ran a Facebook group. But the theme was different. And it was largely for strategists. So for me, it's just, you know, I've never felt good working for other people. I've done psychology tests and they're like, he's just get out get out of his way. Just get out of his way. Uh, and so, you know, the stuff I've returned to is the stuff that made me feel really good when I was a kid.

16:38 Is Passion Overrated?

Sergey Speaking of tapping into one's passion, right? Do you like like because I've spoken to so many people from corporate world who say that passion is overrated but when I speak with people like from artistic world like DJs or actors they say like what is the other way you can only do what you're passionate about so you see people from corporate America told me that your passion could be collecting stamps this will not make you money so you have to do something that puts the food on your table what's your take on this and on converting passion into our occupation.

Mark Both things are true. Someone in corporate America who survives that long or any any corporation, they're going to say that because they've had to turn off their own passion. I'm in my 40s. I travel the world. Most of the people I hang out with are 10 to 20 years younger than I am because people in their 40s, man, they turn off the lights and they turn off their lights in their 20s and 30s. I sometimes hang out with people in their 30s and I'm like, "Guys, do you have any interest? Like, what do you like to do? Are we like to go home and sleep?" Okay. Oh my god. Cool. And then if they say that, I can predict what their lifestyle is. They've done rock climbing twice. They like to play puddle, but they don't play it very often. Like it's like they've done scuba diving lessons. Like they like they have cats and dogs. Like the the life is so predictable. And it's not that it's bad. It's just that's not my life. It's not what I want. And um you know, I've got I've got kids and I pursued the family path and I I tried to be good in that and I just I couldn't. I couldn't, you know.

18:05 Living Life with Urgency

Sergey Do you think people become complacent because they don't have enough challenges? We don't need challenges like I have right now like war in my country and trying to build an international business. But I mean some challenges because sometimes I think that if I lived in maybe in Australia it would be so everything would be so fine that I wouldn't have a motivation to do anything. You know what I'm saying, Mark?

Mark Yeah. Yeah. It Yes. And if you have no motivation to do anything and if life's good and you're happy, you go to the beach for a few months of the year and you've got a job and you go home and you pet the pets and you put your kids to sleep and that's what you want. Great. Yeah. Great. You know, I think um I live life with a little bit more urgency. I I feel like like the metaphor that I feel I feel like I'm a comet flying into the sun. You know, I've been in 40 plus cities in the past year, maybe 60 to 70 in the past two years, and I I arrive in places like I was in Tashken and Usbekistan. I also remember arriving in uh the Dominican Republic in Santa Domingo, and I'm like, what the hell am I doing here? Like, and and then I'm like, hang on, how did you get here? That's amazing that you're here. And then I'm like, but I'm so exhausted. So, I have these arguments as well. So, it's not that one kind of life has to be the way that we all live. Yeah, it's just that I'm restless and I want to live a creative life and I get bored easily and now I just don't spend time in places or with people where I get bored too quickly.

19:45 Independence Comes After Affiliation

Sergey I want to talk to you about your traveling experience and your YouTube channel. But before that, can you kind of confirm, approve or disapprove my thesis that I have about becoming popular, you know, getting getting invitations, you know, for a tour in Asia. Like I have this um this uh idea hypothesis that before you can become you know popular and sought out as a speaker as a businessman uh before you before you have a strong personal brand right and people want you you kind of have to follow the rules for quite some time and what I mean by following the rules for example work in some company that will teach you how to do stuff. So in in in your experience, is it possible to become a star without first being a part of a big big spaceship?

Mark Yeah. I mean I mean I'm not a star and then the success I have and when people turn up it's often a surprise and then it does help to have some conventional career years where you get some names you get some clients if you're working for good companies that's going to help you for another 10 years maybe 20 not 30 uh and then you know you need to be around the culture of the industry that you're in every now and then I see someone come out of college and they set up and they do well and I'm like I bet one of your parents is a billionaire and then I'll Google them. I'm like ah like when you see kids succeed super super young there's usually a trust fund involved so nobody talks about that stuff but uh so could you become a star out of nowhere? Of course. Um I don't feel like a star. I feel like I turn up to places and other people turn up and then I'm like oh that's interesting. Let's do that again. I'm still discovering. But also, you know, two years ago, I was in Manila and Jakarta. We had 300 people turn up to events and I was like, whoa, that like for me, I was like, that's a lot of people. And then it just happened again. And it's happening in Jakarta in two weeks as well. The same thing is happening. I don't know that many people in these countries, but people turn up. So Nigeria was nearly 200. Nairobi in Kenya 120. U Malaysia is often around 150 to 200.

Sergey I didn't know that. But when you worked for big agencies, were you kind of making the name for yourself there, which then helped you with connections with network obviously, right?

Mark I mean in Australia, you know, I left Australia about 15 years ago. So that was when blogging was big. It was when Facebook was still working. It was when a lot of the social media channels were still working, but in their early days. And there was, you know, social media society. people would catch up and you know I had friends there and I I I guess I was known I was guess I was known there in New York I didn't feel very known I felt pretty anonymous and then you know I go to India and there's people following me following me around conferences and you know hundreds of people who know me there so like my dayto-day is not like wow I'm such a star everybody knows me my dayto-day is I'm trying to work out how to like earn money I'm trying to work out how to feed my kids I'm trying to work out how not to burn out I'm trying to make sure that my visas work, that my passport's still valid, that I know which plane to get next. That's my dayto-day. And then every now and then there are cities where there's a lot of people there and I'm like, "Oh, that is awesome and very surprising as well." U and I think as soon as you take that stuff too seriously, you're probably going to punch yourself in the face. Like you'll probably hurt yourself. I don't take it seriously because it's not real. Like you're just an idea. When you travel and people turn up, you're just an idea. you're a fantasy in in people's minds and and I love it. It's my favorite thing to do, but I don't I don't take it fully seriously. I don't think that would be healthy.

24:00 Simple but Distinct Words

Sergey Um I want to on this point I want to ask you you said something also to Chris um about presenting ideas that sometimes you like you have the idea written on the back end back back part of your hand or a small piece of paper that you don't need huge uh PDF files or whatever is simplifying language is something all of us should strive uh to do in growing our brand or business.

Mark Okay. Well, if if you want your brand to travel, that means people need to understand what your brand is about. Therefore, it helps for them to be able to explain it and therefore therefore it helps for them to be able to understand it in a simple way. So yes, like for example, if we create some kind of a marketing campaign or uh an advertising, we should create a unique like talking of words, should we create some unique words conjunction that wasn't ever heard before for this, you know, to travel? Well, you want you want to be distinct. So you want people to hear something where they hear and see something where they're like, "Oh, that's interesting." and I can remember that. And you repeat the codes. You you repeat your brand assets, your distinctive brand assets. Uh it can help for them to not have heard it before. Obviously, we're talking about novelty there. I don't I mean, they could have heard it before. You'd want to flip it a little bit so that people attribute what you're saying to you. Uh you know, I was just in Kenya and there's a lovely lady there. She's been on radio for 20 years. She was on Big Brother twice. She's pretty well known there. And she's got this catchphrase and it's kapow. Kapow. Uh her last name iswalker, but she talks about being talks about kapow. And so she'll do these social media videos where it's like kapow, kick off your duvet, kick off your blankets, and go and live life. Now kicking off your blankets, etc. talks a little bit to like Jordan B. Peterson, and I know a controversial character right now. Um but anyway she's sort of in that space but she uses the catchphrase kapow. Have we heard that before? Yeah. But people attribute to her or people attribute it to her in Kenya. So it helps to be novel but also through repetition people might attribute something that's not novel to you.

26:25 Disconnecting from the Brand You Created

Sergey And I think sometimes people want to get away from the catchphrase or the concept that the world associates themsel uh them with. For example, when I mention Simon Synynic here in Ukraine, everyone says, "Yeah, start with why." I mean, like guys, he written he's written four more books after that. It's not only start with why. Do you think there's a problem for people who blew up uh popularizing some idea to then branch out, you know, and be associated with something different?

Mark Well, well, two things. If you exist in public and people remember you for one thing, you're doing better than 99.9% of people. Second is most of mo anyone who's contributes a lot in public or to the world's intellect, they're known for like one or two songs or one or two trademarked patents or one or two things that they did. It's just how it works. So I I don't think it's a bad thing. I mean, there's this idea that your audience can hold you hostage, which is something that the book, The Innovator's Dilemma, talks about a bit as well, where one of the main reasons that companies struggle to innovate is because they're trying to please clients or customers that bought them from what they were a long time ago, right? So, these ideas are out there. Um, most people won't be remembered. If you want to be remembered, it helps to be remembered for one thing. And if you have that one thing and people remember you for that, that is probably a gift.

28:04 What Mark Wants People to Associate Him With

Sergey So what is your one thing you want to be remembered? Have you discovered it already? Have you crafted it already?

Mark I don't know. I I don't know if that's even a thing for me to say. Like I know what people react to me about. And it's probably the combination of uh you know, I talk a lot about words and connected to that is the big word clarity. I get into people's heads a lot. a lot of psychological probing and I make dumb jokes. So, whatever those three things combine to or combine to be, that's probably where I'm at.

28:40 Travel YouTube Channel

Sergey You're traveling the world. You have a YouTube where you show some of the snippets of your experience. Why did you feel the urge to start a YouTube channel?

Mark Oh yeah, YouTube's ah video, man. It's so tough. So, I've got some travel YouTube. I've got some strategy YouTube, but I've never really committed to it as a channel. Same with Tik Tok. Um, I have a I have a voice for radio and podcast. I know that I'm I'm okay hearing my voice on radio and in podcast is fine. I can put people to sleep. Like, if I slow down like this, I will put you to sleep very, very quickly. And I have a rough voice today. Uh, way too much bad air conditioning. Um, video is hard. Like I don't like seeing my face. Uh, and sometimes when you're filming yourself, you see your face. You're like, "Oh, why is it there? Why is my face there?" And then you can't see your face. And if I can't see my face, I'm probably filming the door and not me. Like, so it's a little bit frustrating. Um, I should have done video years ago. When I was like 20, how old was I? Like when I was 30, I worked one with one of the biggest YouTubers in the world, Natalie Tran. She interned with me in Sydney cuz she was bored. She was a top 10 YouTuber. Wow. At 30, I thought I was too old to do YouTube. She was probably like 22 or something. So when I was 30, I'm like, I'm too old to do this. And then through the years, you know, I see people like Anthony Bourdain on CNN. Yeah. And I'm like, okay, you can be a little bit different. In the UFC, guys were winning fights in their 40s, but this is after I quit martial arts. I'm like, okay, I've got age all wrong here. And so I've dipped my toe into the into the YouTube world in the past couple of years, but I just haven't found a format I have that I like. My mental blocks are pretty severe when it comes to video. But uh you know, I need to be there cuz that's what the world's about right now.

30:37 Why Travelling?

Sergey But why specifically traveling? Why you're not teaching strategy? Why why travel? Why travel channel?

Mark Well, it's probably two things. Uh, one is I feel like I've taught a lot of strategy and it's when I come to countries where some of this is very new, but I feel rejuvenated. Oh my god, I've been taking this stuff like I feel like everyone knows everything and then I go somewhere and they don't. I'm like, ah, okay, I got to go back because I'm not teaching people in England. I'd be teaching probably people in the global south, right? Yeah. So, it's just like a weird thing in my head. And then I watch a lot of travel YouTube. It's one of my favorite uh formats. You know, I watch a little bit of the pol political analysis on YouTube and I watch travel YouTube and then I'm into like highlights of South Park and Family Guy and just weird weird stuff. Uh there's a few really good geop young meme based geopolitical YouTubers that I like as well like Gatsu from Georgia. Uh Roman no is a Russian guy but he's out in Portugal and Leopold Gopold. There's guys like that. They just do this really unhinged. They all talk like they're black Americans, by the way. But I shouldn't say that, but you know, they're Georgian, Russian, and English, and they all talk like they're black Americans, but their content is really funny. It's really good. Um, they need that feedback, by the way. Yeah. And so I just, you know, I love, but the travel thing is like I travel a lot. So my goal last year was to go to 40 cities and record videos everywhere. I did 10 videos. It's so difficult to manage your energy unless you're just like if you're 110% narcissist, you'll get it done. But I'm not. I'm like I don't even know what my percentage is, but it's just exhausting. Like you get on a plane, maybe someone's trying to maybe someone's trying to rob you that you got to go talk in an event, which you're doing with 200 people, and then you're going to film a video. It's like my brain melting.

32:33 Questions We Should Ask Ourselves

Sergey I think you have a amazing ability to ask great questions and this is probably because you been a radio host and been writing a lot. Um, and how how about this? What do you think are the the main questions that and this is more of a philosophical question. Sorry that we're jumping from topic to topic like that. But on the matter of asking questions, what are some questions that you think people should ask themselves in order to you know have a better fulfilled life because maybe you know Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Any any because I think great critical thinking process starts with a great question right and reflections that's all stuff is all about questions.

Mark I think a book that really helped me which is it's very well known. It's called man's search for meaning. It was written by Victor Frankle. He was a Jewish psychologist who was in at least I think at least one maybe two concentration camps. And what he talks about or the way that I interpret this book, it's a short book. There are a lot of famous people who read it once a year. But the way I interpret his book is is no more complicated than this. Meaning helps you get from day to day. and you're going to make it up. For some people in a concentration camp, it's about going home to see their dog, to see their wife, to see their family. For someone else, it's about writing 10 books. Neither is better than the other. The point is that you need to think about what it is so you feel animated, so you feel like you want to be alive, so you feel active. So, I think that's where I start. And then the two questions that I focus on the most and they help me when I'm in a bit of a funk and I can get in a funk. You know, I was probably jetlagged for four months last year. I can get into a funk. Um, one of them is what are your verbs? What are your verbs? And what what that means is what are you doing when you feel alive? The second is is there a is there a group of people that you're contributing to? And so I I know my answers to those things and they help ground me more often than not.

35:15 Verbs That Make Us Happy

Sergey I just want to process this. Yeah. Verbs that make me feel alive and the community that I'm contributing. So I know the answer to the first one, but the second one is still a a little bit obscure for me at this point. I'm 35, Mark. I'm getting there. Right.

Mark Oh, you're so [ __ ] old. What What's your answer to the first question? What are your verbs?

Sergey Dancing. Uh doing doing speaking on podcast or speak on on group calls to my team. So, I like I like I don't know like inspiring. I don't know why, but I feel like I I'm at my best when I make other people feel like things are possible in life, you know. Um, and laughing. So, this has nothing my verbs have nothing to do with work.

Mark And this is this is funny. No, wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. No. Like, so my verbs are things like I I'll start with some obvious ones. write, teach, talk, have long conversations, lift weights, dance on rooftops in Colombia. Uh, definitely more dancing than ever, man. I've been dancing like I I've been in Africa and people weren't dancing where I was and sometimes I only I'm the only white guy. Don't call me racist. I was just surprised. I was just surprised that there's like one one person dancing in three clubs and it's this guy and he's the only guy who looks like this. Okay, don't call me racist, Kenya. I love you. um travel, eating spicy [ __ ] like it it's just simple stuff. You can you could write this down in 10 minutes. Most people know these things. Yeah. Right. And then for me, who I'm trying to contribute to is, you know, I could say it's strategist, but the thing that pisses me off the most is when I see squandered creative potential. It really frustrates me. And I wish I was a bit more narcissistic because then it' be like, "No, dude, just do your own art. Just like whatever you're about, do that." And I'm like, "No, I want to help that person over there." And I'm like, why are you doing that again? You know, you're wasting your energy a little bit sometimes. So, the verbs, they're always super simple. And then it's how are you going to build a livelihood around it if depending on what you need.

37:07 Tony Robbins' Main Life Lesson

Mark Tony Robbins always says that your life matters when it's in service to others. Well, this is my interpretation of what he says. Like, you need the energy to contribute and make others be better. And that will fill you up, you know, and it goes in circles. It can That's one It's one point of view. It's very It's a point of view that's been out there for a very long time. Uh a friend who was dealing with some breast cancer situations sent me a book, was it called the two halves of life? It was written by a Franciscan monk. I'm not religious, by the way, but the main idea in this book, which is not even original to this book, is that there are two halves of life. In the first half, you try to work out who you are. And especially when you're young, you define who you are by who you're not. So, let's say you're into hip-hop. Well, I'm not into punk. I'm not into skateboarding. I'm not into surfing. Right? You sort of define yourself by pushing things away. Second half of life, which could kick in at any age. It could be when you're 10, 30, 50, and a lot of people don't hit it. And it's not that you have to. Second half of life is like, what am I going to do here that's going to help other people? Now, if you're in a capitalistic society, you also need to work out how to earn money from that. Does that make things cynical? Can. It can. But, you know, sometimes the these ideas there's the ideas that help us religiously, not religiously, but there's there are the ideas that help us psychologically and potentially to do better in a particular cultural subculture. And then there's the capitalist wrapping that goes around all that as well.

38:49 Sweathead Community for Strategists

Sergey So your community called Sweatthead is the extension of your desire to help people and to not let them [ __ ] up their creative potential. Is that right?

Mark I mean strategists always [ __ ] up their creative potential because they don't explore it at all because they're too scared. They're usually too scared. Uh, a lot of strategists I know would be more comfortable just doing exams every day than actually exploring who they are or trying to work out who they are creatively. But yeah, it came from really just trying to help people form a gang and and have other people like them around them. That's really where it came from.

Sergey You wrote an interesting lesson out of so many that you could have put in my little questioner that I sent you that a job uh and or a romantic partner can't complete you. Can you elaborate a little on this?

41:15 Take on Dating and Marriage

Mark Sure. I mean, there was the movie Jar Maguire in which they're yelling at each other. Are they yelling at each other? It's such an old movie that I would not want to watch again. I saw it very briefly a few months ago. I'm like off. But you know, there's this whole thing, you complete me. And then I remember going to weddings and not to dunk on anyone. The guy would get up and go, "Yeah, this girl I'm marrying, she completes me." It's just such a toxic idea. Cuz really what happen really what happens is if you're in a romantic relationship, which most people are not in the world right now, especially if they're younger than me, you tend to be attracted to people who are different from you, you tend to attract people through whom you're both overcompensating. And then over time, the things through which you're overcompensating become problems. So the quiet person attracts the loud person, the loud person attracts the quiet person. a few years later in many, not all, in many relationships, they're like, "Why are you so quiet? Why are you so loud?" Right? So, I'm not going to say anything original here, but I just don't think it's healthy to think that a person or a job will complete you. That's that's the work for you to do by yourself. And if you're creatively oriented, it's probably going to be through your own creativity and community.

Sergey uh and Simon Synynic who mentioned already he says that his definition of friendship or his definition of uh romantic relationship is that we are going to grow together and and what you're saying is I think is is that only the person who's different will help you grow right so you're kind of helping each other to grow

Mark I don't know a lot of couples who've grown together they might say they have but I doubt it they're probably grown apart Really? Oh my. What I No. What I hear the most what I hear the most from people who've been together for a long time is they don't grow together. They just don't spend a lot of time with each other anymore. They don't like each other that much. And she's doing that thing over here and he's doing that thing over there. They're not growing together. It's not like you're Jack and the Beanstalk.

Sergey Yeah. So all this all this feeling, all this chemistry in the beginning is just uh you know uh some hormones rush. That's it.

Mark Yeah. I mean, love love is chemical. It's chemical. But if you know that, you can work out ways to like boost it to to make it continue, right? But that's going to come through exploration. It'll come through adventure. It'll come through a sense of safety as well. You know, I obviously can't speak directly to people in Ukraine, but if you're stressed all the time, that [ __ ] your brain up, [ __ ] your hormones up. probably is going to affect people people's ability to to to get pregnant. It'll affect pmenopause and menopause. It'll affect so much stuff that maybe we don't understand just yet. And yeah, you can grow together. I just think that's a romantic idea that is probably not true.

Sergey I miss so many things right now. And you know, uh, with constant power outages, uh, you know, because Russians [ __ ] keep keep on bumping our power plants, you know, to make us free. So, you kind of start valuing little things.

43:07 Final Message from Mark

Sergey Any final message to to our audience, to our listeners from you, Mark?

Mark This is not necessarily come coming from like a neolistic or hydonic hedonistic place, but a friend said to me that it's nice to lead a life that turns you on. Oh, and yes, that can be a privileged thing to do, but I don't like the opposite. So, advice, may you lead a life that turns you on.

Sergey Perfect. Thank you, Mark.

Mark Pollard

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Mark Pollard — Brand Strategist, Author, Founder of Sweathead

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