Welcome to the podcast, Mark. I’m so excited that you’ve agreed to come on today because I’ve been following you for a while on Instagram since you started your Qigong sessions on Instagram. And you are a master storyteller and you do so many things. You’ve got your fingers in so many pies, which is fascinating. And I just thought you’d be a brilliant person to talk to about storytelling today.

But it’s really difficult to know where to start to describe you. So for people at home that don’t know you and know who you are, can you tell us about what you do and how it all started?

Mark (00:45.98)
Yeah, of course. And it is complex because, you know, there’s that great quote from Heidi Prybe, to love someone long -term is to witness a thousand funerals of the person they used to be. And to love yourself long -term is to witness a thousand funerals of the person you used to be. And when we start in our career, it’s really tempting to think that the thing we do will be the thing we always do. But there are so many variables. We change, the world changes.

Customers change, what people want changes. And consequently, it’s not surprising that we more stretch and flex our own careers. And that’s what’s happened to me. So I’m 55. I’m a granddad, I’m a dad. I’m an environmental expert, author and consultant. That’s what I thought I would always be doing. I environmental science degree back in the 80s, late 80s, and I thought this is me. This is what I’m going to do.

And I did sustainability solely for about, I would say 30 years until about 2010. was an environmental consultant within the local authority, but working with businesses outside of the local authority. Then I was an environmental consultant in its own right. Then I went to ASDA as head of sustainability. In all of that time.

I’d have to talk about sustainability and it’s quite boring. All of my initial conversations are niche. All of the things I started off on were niche. How do we get to a more circular economy? How do we deal with air pollution in the Shipley Valley corridor? They were very niche and you’ve only got to be like 1 % more engaging.

Mark (02:35.612)
than the next person before you’re the best speaker on that session. And then you get invited to go to another session because people really liked what you did. And that’s what happened. I became slightly funnier, slightly more human than the next speaker and consequently got asked to do the bits after lunch, the kickoff bits of conferences.

And so I, although an environmental consultant, I ended up developing a skill in speaking and, and we’ll hold that thought there because I didn’t get into storytelling for a little bit longer. So I was an environmental consultant, was head of sustainability for Asda Walmart. I then set up my own business and I found that the powers of persuasion were all verbal.

I was changing people’s minds with words and images and I could help them imagine a better way of living. And therefore, if they were, I don’t know, they were making, I don’t know, degreasing equipment or they were making foods or packaging, I could help conjure up an image of how much better the world would be if they did it with less resource, with fewer solvents, with less waste. could use words and I think my stock and trade

now words. I could use words to make them feel hopeful about the future. And it isn’t just words, it Victoria? It’s creativity and I coined this definition and I’m going to hang on it. Creativity is nothing more than imagining a world that hasn’t arrived yet.

Now some people can describe that world, some people can draw it, some people can photograph it or video it, that’s creative outlet, that’s amazing. But being able to imagine it, that is the true essence of creativity. What I was able to do was imagine it and then communicate it using my math. And so I was an environmental consultant and helping people imagine a better way of living, a better way of making money, a better way of being.

Mark (04:36.46)
and I gave more and more talks, more and talks, and then I kind of became a paid speaker.

So, you know, would you do a talk? Yes, it’s going to cost you 500 quid or whatever. It started off really low. and demand didn’t reduce. No one stopped ringing. And I thought, well, I can, this is interesting. I can do more of this. And I was very lucky. I was working with Envirowise, which is a government, was a government quango, I guess. It was killed in the 2008 cutting of the quangos. But Envirowise used to provide free advice to small businesses in the country on sustainability. And they ran events and those events needed

to be uplifted, so I’ve got to use lots. So over the best part of, I guess, 15 years, I managed to hone a style of speaking that really…

created its own center of gravity that was very velcro -y, like fly paper. People enjoyed it, and it’s a little bit self -deprecation, a little bit of knowledge, a little bit of humor. So that grew and grew and grew, and I carried on doing the sustainability. And then I got asked, I part of the due lectures. When the due lectures, well, a few years after the due lectures started, I was asked to kind of become a founding partner, so put some money and time in to help shape it and grow it.

that for the best part of, gosh, I don’t know, 15 years, yeah, something like that. I’m no longer involved but they’re still going well. But in that process I became compere, so I’d stand up at the beginning and my skill in that role is to

Mark (06:15.812)
almost like an antidote to the very kind of masculine approach that was being put forward at that time. And to bring something that was a little bit more balanced. And then to spot what I was very good at, or I am very good at, is spotting a strand in a talk about, I don’t know, geolocation and what three words. And seeing a strand in a talk about headspace and the app.

and being able to connect those strands and then pull that into a conversation around food cooperatives. And that ability to see pattern, and that’s all it is, I’m just seeing pattern, that has been.

probably my biggest gift. I can see patterns before they emerge. can see patterns in when I’m watching the rugby to play rugby at a really high level. So I can see patterns emerging on a pitch, but I can also see patterns in talk, patterns in books, can see patterns emerging. And I describe them with patterns and lots of people go, what the hell are you talking about? But I know what I’m talking about.

So being able to compare, being able to pull and host these strands and weave something with them that summed it all up and felt inclusive and safe and knitted everything together and still ask a devastatingly difficult question, that became what I did. And through that, I was also asked to help speakers when they’re a bit nervous. you, Mark?

have 10 minutes with me and and consequently I set up a workshop for the do lectures called do present where I would teach 30 people in a room in a day how to how to speak now of course you know this better than anyone else Victoria it isn’t about how to speak it’s about how to love yourself it’s about how to create a structure for a talk

Mark (08:10.214)
that sits really comfortably in your mind so you don’t forget it and that takes the audience on a journey. And there are many, there are six different storytelling methods that I use. There are eight in total, probably nine actually, but I use six. So this workshop, it wasn’t about the number of slides, the fonts, it wasn’t about any of that. was all about story. And so unbeknownst to me, I pulled the patterns into a structure.

and wrote a workshop. And then the easiest thing to do once you’ve written a workshop is to turn it into a book. So I wrote Do Present, which was a follow -up book to Do Disrupt that I wrote 11 years ago now, which is all about how to overcome kind of stuck behaviors in yourself to allow you to grow. So all of this happened and…

We run a talks events now, so we run Reasons to be Cheerful, Reasons to be Cheerful Live, we run a blog, we’ve got so many things that we do as a family, it’s a family business.

I’m still an environmental consultant and I still get stuck in carbon footprint. This morning I’ve been going through a presentation on carbon footprinting that I we did for a really big sports retailer. And it’s brilliant. It’s beautiful. This year, this is a really good time for this conversation. This year, rather than the just deliver a dry report with a spreadsheet, which is what we would standardly do, because that’s geared to the audience. You always think about your audience. That’s geared to the audience. I wanted to light some Tinder.

under the imagination of this business to let them see how they could grow their business and build this in without using sustainability as greenwashing. And that’s a massively fine balance at the moment. So I applied my storytelling approach to the report and it went down an absolute storm. So that’s what I do. I teach people to speak, do sustainability. I’ve written a new book called, You Can’t Make Money From a Dead Planet.

Mark (10:09.958)
which is really me reclaiming my authority because I became so, people have become aware of me through the other things that I did. But fundamentally, the words that runs all the way through me, like blackpool through a stick of rock, is sustainability. That’s what I do, that’s why I believe in. There’s a lot there, is that okay?

Victoria Brown (10:34.654)
It’s amazing, yeah that’s amazing and I can vouch because you still do your presenting workshops and I went to one a few months ago and it was amazing so look that up if you want to get better at presenting, I really recommend it. It was amazing day as well, was just a lovely wholesome really uplifting day as a whole so yeah fantastic.

Mark (10:46.002)
Thank you.

Mark (10:56.934)
It’s a very exposing workshop. There are demons that we dig into and therefore I have to create a really safe, loving place.

Victoria Brown (11:02.324)
Mm. Yeah.

Victoria Brown (11:08.376)
Yeah, and you feel that, it’s amazing. But as soon as you said pattern, I was really intrigued by that because of course that’s exactly what a story is when you really break it down. And I love the fact that you were self -aware enough to realize that’s what you were doing. Do you think that you were always good at finding patterns and using words in that way? Or do you think that’s a skill that you’ve built for necessity?

Mark (11:36.026)
the timing of the podcast couldn’t be greater. So I think I saw it growing up. think I was a very bright, that sounds really egotistical, I passed exams until GCSE, O -level as we called them back then. I was academically capable.

but I was slightly odd in that I could see those patterns. That really helps on the rugby pitch. It really, really helps. And it really helps when you’re understanding trends, is what I do now, right? But interestingly, I thought I saw it as a curious weirdness, curiosity and a weirdness. And actually, it’s only the last two years.

that I’ve changed the language I use around this. And that’s become more apparent as I’ve understood my own neurodiversity. And I’ve let some of that more eccentric behavior sit more comfortably in my own mind. I mean, I’ve never stopped it. I’ve never encouraged it. It’s just who I am. Very easily known, very easily fully known. And I don’t hold anything back.

and that’s part of, that’s the other side of the same coin. it’s probably, said two years ago, probably four years ago that I realised. So my language changed about four years ago when, and I think, I mean I had read Pattern and Recognition, which is a really good book, and it’s not really about that, but it kind of is about that as well. So yes, absolutely, absolutely.

Victoria Brown (13:13.166)
And the question I get from lots of people is how much of your story to share? How much do the audience want to hear? What’s relevant? What’s not relevant? How much is too much? You do so many different things. So how do you decide what to share and when to share it? Is that a conscious decision or is it something you just do naturally?

Mark (13:37.514)
I wished it was a conscious decision. I’ve been accused by many people of being an oversharer and I had a really interesting conversation with a wonderful man called Steve Edge who’s a designer based in East London. We met a few times and we get on, right? Sartorially we get on. He’s much more flamboyant than me but we’re in the same lane and socially and politically we get on and culturally we get on.

And he said, let me you for dinner. So I went out for lunch with him. Dinner for me is at lunchtime. I was the middle of the day. Tea is the evening meal. I may be talking to a southerner, so it’s different. But I went out for dinner with him and at lunch. And he said to me, said, tell me what it is you do then. So I told him. And after about three things, he went, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you throw me three balls, I’ve only got two hands. You need a unifier.

And that was a really big awareness. went, okay, I can’t carry on just throwing all this stuff at people. So what is it that I do? So I help people and the planet find its voice. That’s how I unify that. And that links up with my sustainability stuff. And then the way I do that, and if I’m talking to somebody that is interested in carbon footprint, the way I do

is by deep measurement and then advice. Or the way I do that is by helping you unlock the thing that’s kept you quiet, because that has also kept you small, and helped you find your true voice and a way of speaking. So I have the unifier, and then I have the other things. Victoria, I still tell people too much about what I do and who I am, so it’s still, I don’t have an off switch there sometimes.

Victoria Brown (15:25.496)
So that unifier, is that kind of like a purpose?

Mark (15:29.582)
No, it’s not, yeah, well, in that case, no, do you know what, it’s a really good question because it’s different, but mine isn’t. Mine is the same, it’s my why. I believe that everybody has a voice, including the planet, and they all deserve to be heard. That is my why.

Victoria Brown (15:30.476)
or is it different?

Mark (15:46.45)
And then the way I do that, you know, then go into your how and you what. And I know it’s a cliched hackneyed process and I know Simon Sinek borrowed it off somebody else. And I know he then published his book like a long time ago, 2010 or 2009. There is nothing better in my mind to clarify thinking and to create a funnel that allows you to pinpoint what it is that you do, what it is you’re for.

Victoria Brown (16:15.375)
That’s amazing. That’s an amazing tip. And I also loved about the fact that you talked about your customer, the person hearing, or your audience, whoever that is hearing that conversation, where are they? What do they need to hear? Because I think that’s absolutely key.

Mark (16:29.49)
Totally, totally. Otherwise we’re in a proper mess and we’re telling everybody everything and that’s not good enough, it?

Victoria Brown (16:41.538)
Yeah, absolutely. So, do you think that anyone can be a good storyteller? And how can we all get better at doing

Mark (16:55.374)
Everyone can tell stories and we can all remember an afternoon, an evening where we sat around and we captured people’s attention with our words. Everyone can do that. Having the confidence to take that from that one isolated situation and turn it into something else, that’s what’s missing for many people. So everyone can.

My big issue here is those people that can’t remember having control over everybody’s eyes. That’s normally because they’ve had their voice pushed out of them, battered out of them, quiet and muffled by other people. Other people who feel that their voice is more important. It often happens to women by men, often.

Or a mother or a father, I’m more important than you, I’m the adult, I’m big, you’re small, all that. Or a boss. So the people that can’t remember having control of everyone’s eyes and ears, I think they’ve just been worn down and that makes me really sad because we can all do it. My job is to uncover

the ability to do it. My job is to give the confidence. Some people have natural charisma, some people walk into a room and they’ve said nothing but you know they’re there. There’s this, I don’t want to get too woo -woo about it, there’s this electricity, this kind of aura that comes with people and you can’t stop looking or listening to them.

I can’t teach that, but what I can is I can help remove the block that we have that says we can’t do this. And I can help elevate the voice that always needed to be heard. I can teach that and I can teach confidence. So yeah, everyone can do it, but there are lots of people who genuinely deeply believe they can’t. and it’s an unlocking process. It’s a lit, it’s a little bit like, it’s a bit, a little bit like PTSD. You know, you, we, we, we’ve been shattered.

Mark (19:09.152)
or ignored or whatever. Ghosting is the new bullying. Honestly, I cannot. I have no time for it at all and it irritates the shit out of me. But that’s another form of taking someone’s voice. So we can all do it. It’s understanding why we think we can’t in the first instance.

Victoria Brown (19:31.64)
So what would be a helpful first step for someone that feels that they can’t tell their story?

Mark (19:38.379)
So where I start with this is on this idea of a limiting belief and we go into this in some detail in the book and on the workshop we do it live.

So thinking back to the thing or the advice that you were given that made you pull your horns in, that made you a bit smaller than you are, and removing, erasing that advice. What kept us safe now keeps us small. And there’s a great analogy here, and it’s an experiment done by a German zoologist called Carl Mobius, called the Pike Syndrome.

And what Carl Mobius did is he took a big tank about as big as an average sitting room and in it he put a pike, aggressive carnivorous fish and then lots of little fish and the pike eats the little fish. That’s what he does. And then Carl Mobius lowered in a glass bell jar, opened at the bottom and opened at the top, lowers it in and the top stands slightly proud of the water and the pike is on the outside of the bell jar.

And on the inside of the bell jar, Mobius dropped in some more little fish. And the pike sees the little fish but can’t see the jar. And the little fish see the pike but can’t see the jar. And so the pike swims fast at the little fish and smashes its face against the jar. And after a period, it sinks to the bottom depressed, thinking that it’s unable to get to the little fish.

and it loses all kind of enthusiasm. Mobius then lifts the glass bell jar out, the fish swim everywhere, they’re happy as Larry and I never understood where that phrase comes from. They’re happy as Larry and they swim all down the side and face the little of the pike and the pike does nothing. His limited belief is he can’t eat the little fish.

Mark (21:35.472)
And if you leave the pike in there, Mobius didn’t do this, but other zoologists have, if you leave the pike in there, it’ll starve to death surrounded by food. And we sit in our little businesses, starving to death, surrounded by opportunity, because we don’t think we deserve or we’re confident enough to go and put our product, our voice, our view of the world in front of potential clients. And that could even just be on LinkedIn, the biggest blogging platform.

on the planet. We sit at home alone, lonely in our rooms because we don’t think we deserve love or we don’t think we matter and we’re not interesting. These are all limiting beliefs. So I always start there. What is it that’s keeping you small? How can we talk about that? How can we remove that?

And then I look at the idea. So a presentation for its own sake is pointless, right? You need an idea, you need a kind of a theme. And the idea is the main thing. If you’ve not got an idea, don’t give a presentation, don’t give a talk. Something shouldn’t be presented. Quarter three results shouldn’t be presented. That’s a briefing note. Quarter four ideation, innovation, that should be presented. So some things you need to leave in the written format, some things you need to elevate.

into the spoken format. And then you need to begin to structure. notes are great, I use little pictures, I use single words. And then I said there are these six storytelling methods that you can use, which might be helpful. And some people don’t like them and they just stand up and tell their story. But you gotta start with who you are and what’s kept your voice quiet. That’s where I go first.

Victoria Brown (23:20.938)
such a great tip and I think it’s when you’re in that kind of state it’s easy to think that some people haven’t got those limiting beliefs, that some people have it okay and the more you go on you realise we all have those limiting beliefs and it’s just a constant, I’m not going say word battle, it’s constant work keeping on top of that and making sure that you’re managing that in the right

Mark (23:42.57)
for certain and this isn’t, look, Victoria, you know this, this is not about just storytelling. This is about.

Victoria Brown (23:56.97)
agree more because you can’t separate the two you know especially if you’re a small business owner people ask me sometimes you’re a business coach are you a life coach and I’m just like how can you ever separate the two if you are a small business owner because you are your business everything you are the energy behind

Mark (24:13.98)
But even if

for certain, and even if you’re not a small business owner, even if you’re a C -suite, you know, I coach people from startups to C -suite and the first two sessions, we’re all talking about like the personal stuff, the person. And I’m certain that some people must get a bit frustrated that we spend two sessions there. But if we can free that person and we can find

ambitious, we can find the aspiration of the curious, then work changes naturally. We don’t leave ourselves at the door when we walk into work, right? We used to, like business stone face. When you think about the TV shows that determine most people’s view of business, you think about dragons den, crusty grumpy people, basically either saying no or gushing.

Right, that’s neither helpful. Ideas that they’re okay, then there’s never a bad idea, but there’s never a great idea on there. But the worst of all is the apprentice. You know, where you’ve got an out of date dinosaur, and I don’t care which country we’re in, dinosaur of a business leader telling you how to be frankly a little bit nastier. And it’s not his or her, his in this case, fault, because the people that come in,

They bring the Machiavellian, they bring this controlling nasty version of themselves. We saw it in the general election in the UK this year.

Mark (25:56.466)
we saw a really unpleasant Conservative leader, Rishi Sunak. We saw his behaviour as unpleasant before the election and then he lost. And what we’ve seen since the election is a really nice man. And the thing is, if he’d been a really nice or honest man before, he may have got voted in. Like when we hide ourselves and put on the character clothing, the fancy dress of the person that we think others want us to be, we’ve lost all hope.

That’s when it gets messy. And it happens in business. And that’s why, like you, I can’t unpick the rope that is the person. It’s part business, it’s part personal, it’s part relationships. And they’re all woven together. I make no excuses to go back there and I know you feel the same.

Victoria Brown (26:46.112)
It’s interesting. Yeah, you have to work on the foundation first. And I think it’s almost in those cases, almost like the head’s taking over from the heart, which for me is where it always goes wrong. So this is what I should and I always say that people should themselves. This is what I should do because it’s ways the expected and this is the state and it seems a safe option. So it’s safe for me to be all masculine and, you know, when nasty, because that’s what’s expected. And that’s much safer than being myself, which is a bit unpredictable and a bit emotional. But actually,

Like you said, that isn’t always the safest option.

Mark (27:17.614)
Can I just call you up on those two words? Being myself, because that’s a bit unpredictable and a little bit emotional. Those things are good, right? Being honest and authentic with the way we feel is good. And it’s not about being unpredictable, it’s about being human. And even those of us who get this, we still use words that…

that form the argument of the business stone face. Look, the world’s changing, businesses are changing. You don’t want a leader like that anymore. And as people of color, as women, as people who believe in being more emotional, more honest, as they rise, the old world will fight. And that’s what we’re seeing now. That’s what we’re seeing now. We’re seeing it in politics in the US and we’re seeing it in business everywhere.

We’re seeing the old world fighting and there is nothing more frightening, nothing more scary and nothing more dangerous than a dying lion because it has nothing to lose. Our job is to keep rising and to imagine a world that is better, fairer, kinder and more sustainable.

Victoria Brown (28:30.51)
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for calling me. But yeah, you’re absolutely right. So you’ve worked with a load of companies, some really big household names to small micro businesses. How do they all approach storytelling and what do they get right or wrong?

Mark (28:34.224)
Not calling you out, we all do it.

Mark (28:52.508)
So.

Mark (28:56.028)
Really, really good question. Those people that get it right, they don’t even know what they’ve done to get it right. They just sense it, they feel it, they have their radar on, they can hear the room.

And it’s the same companies that have got it wrong in the past. So I’ll use an example. I use it loads. Nike fell far from where they needed to be in their storytelling. Their storytelling was all about sporting excellence, all about further, faster, longer. And it was fine, right? I wouldn’t buy a pair of spikes because…

someone in particular was wearing them. wouldn’t buy a bike because Lance Armstrong was right. I mean, definitely wouldn’t do that. Oscar Pistorius would not be selling me any really shorts, right? But I would look at those adverts and think, no, this isn’t what it’s all about. And when you go back to where they started, when they were working with Wyden Kennedy in the first years, and you look at the print adverts.

There’s one called the Battle of Atlanta. It’s a story. It’s a picture. It’s at the end of the Atlanta Marathon. It’s absolutely teeming it down with rain. There are people collapsed on the floor. There are people stood looking up. There’s only two people wearing Nike shoes. Everybody else is wearing a different brand. And that’s all it is. And the story is, the story’s all about achievement.

exhaustion and growing a better you. It’s a beautiful thing. There’s another one, City Runner. It’s early morning, the sun’s just risen, the light’s coming straight through the high rises of New York. It’s so early, there’s no traffic on the road. And this person is running between the streets and this little massive shaft of light comes between two buildings and he runs across the middle of it. It’s beautiful. And then you’ve got Walt Stapp.

Mark (30:52.778)
My name’s Walt Stack, I’m 80 years of age. I run 17 miles every morning. People ask me how I keep my teeth from chattering in the wintertime. I leave them in my locker. They were never about extraordinary people doing their job, which is where they ended up. They were about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. And it took a lot of hassle before they got back, and they are back, and it’s lovely. So I think they tell really beautiful stories.

They stand for something amazing. I they got lost in the middle and I think they started telling beautiful stories. But then, know, change sector. I’m trying to remember the name of the company that I’m thinking of. It’ll come to me in a minute. But if we go into food and we go into drink, you’ve got companies that are able to tell stories of the sourcing of their food and what difference that makes.

I don’t mean Man From Dermonte, he say yes, because that’s horrific storytelling. That’s just like white savior storytelling. There’s so many good ways of telling stories that I just think that Chipotle, that’s the company I’m thinking of, they did a really beautiful film where they had this kind of like road to Damascus experience, where they realized that the food that they were producing was not raised with kindness. I appreciate we killed it before we eat it, but I’m not naive.

And they produced a beautiful, really stunning cartoon around that awareness and around the need to change animal agriculture. They tell great stories. And people like Method, know, Method’s mission statement. I mean, they’ve changed a little bit now because they’re owned by somebody else, but we fight dirty. It’s beautiful. Say no more. We fight dirty. Three words. I get it. I know exactly what they’re

So there’s loads of great examples of good storytelling. There are many, many more examples of bad storytelling. And where my two worlds combine, story and sustainability, that is almost like the worst case in terms of bad storytelling. And you see it all the time. The greenwashing and a friend of mine, a really dear friend of mine called Claire, came up with the word green cocking, mixing greenwashing and peacocking. And that’s where we’ve gone with

Mark (33:16.562)
And there’s been a really immediate reaction to this romanticization of what people do. You know, I don’t care whether you recycle your packaging into your toys into trays. I don’t care if you’re chopping down the rainforest to provide the food that goes on those trays. So don’t give me the fringe story. Give me the core story and the customer, the consumer and the advertising standards authority have grown tired of this.

And the end result is something called green hushing, where everyone is keeping their environmental stories to themselves. They’re still doing great work, but they’re not going to market with them. And this, think, is the saddest thing, because we could learn so much. And when you think about sustainability, I’m going to mix sustainability and story one more time. I’ve spent 35 years trying to persuade people to do things differently so that it has less impact and still makes a profit. You’re not making a profit, you’re not a business.

And in all that time, the vast majority of the narrative has been, if you don’t, things will get really bad. If you don’t, sea level rise. If you don’t, I’ve just had an argument with the engineer on the boiler, it’s a wood burning boiler, about climate change. Don’t expect to have that, Because the alternative narrative, the other side of the polarization, they’re telling better stories.

They’re telling stories of collusion, conspiracy and control. All of those scenes sound really exciting compared to We May All Die. Had we have used storytelling and imagination to paint a picture of a better, fairer, safer world, then maybe people would have done more on the sustainability front than they already have. So I think it’s really interesting about how we can use story to motivate.

to attract customers that are more like us. Because that’s the aim, to do business with people that then go and tell other people how good you are. This is magic, this is where we need to go. And to do business with people who are nice, that’s the aim. And that’s all about story. I don’t just want to buy a suit, I want to know that my suit, which I bought from Universal Works, has got three patches.

Mark (35:37.894)
a spare button and a little bit of thread that’s a different color because the founders of that company were old punks and they loved the fact that you could DIY clothes, that things weren’t matching, that they would put patches on things before they’d broken. And it allows me, that gives me the permission, I love that story, I’ll tell everyone that story, and it gives me the permission that when I rip that suit, I’ll repair it with a patch that’s a different color and it doesn’t matter because it’s part of the same story.

That’s the thing that I love.

Victoria Brown (36:06.83)
To me, yeah, to me that storytelling at its finest because it shows that they’re so aware of their story. They know it’s not just about telling people, and people think storytelling is just about telling stories to people, but it’s how you embed it into your product and how you, you know, in your processes as well.

Mark (36:26.518)
Yeah, it’s exactly that. It’s down to the culture. So, you know, if you’ve got a culture of getting boxes out the door, look, the phrase I use, and it’s my phrase, and people can borrow it, but credit me, Is your job was never to move pencil or pixel, boxes or units. Your job was always to move hearts and minds. And that’s how we grow our businesses. And that’s how we grow about a world. They’re unified, they are one.

Victoria Brown (36:59.288)
loads of food for thought so far. So you’ve had some amazing experiences over your career and your life. What’s been your biggest pinch me moment so

Mark (37:14.69)
God, that’s a great question. It hasn’t come yet. I’ve got a bigger one. I’ve got the biggest one to come of all. I don’t know what it is, but there’s, yeah, I’m hungry. Right now, I’m really hungry. I’m hungry for making a bigger difference. So there’s something that I haven’t even thought about yet that will slap me around the face. don’t know what it is. To date, things that I’ve really been proud of. I’ll take home out of it kids and grandkids and stuff, but work stuff.

We were lauded for some of the really early work we did in the 1990s on sustainability. We were lauded by, as then, Prince Charles, now the King, and I met him not that long ago. And again, he was really complimentary about some of that early breakthrough work that we did, when no one was doing anything like that.

One of my favorite bits of feedback was from an incredible speaker. I think I mentioned this on the workshop, guy called Magnus Lindqvist. He’s a futurologist, the best speaker I’ve ever seen speak. And he came and got me after an event where I’d spoken just before him. And he said, you’re an amazing speaker. That’s one of the best speeches I’ve ever seen and I want to help you get better. That’s all Magnus did. We met for beers, but he never helped me. Of course he did, because he gave me that feedback that made me believe in myself.

We’ve won loads of awards over the years. Do you know what? When I think about it, there isn’t one. They’re all great. They’re all ego. They’re all great. I love the fact that, first of all, I wake up in the morning. That’s a gift. I’m awake. There’s no coughing on each side of me. It’s going to be a good day.

I pinch myself when I get a client that believes something amazing. Like I’ve been working with Patagonia recently in Amsterdam. That’s a wonderful, mean, that’s a gift. But Soto is working with Universal Works or Black Horse Lane Atelier. Soto are working with these really small, businesses. Every time someone trusts me, I pinch myself sometimes. it’s that, it’s the everyday amazingness. It’s the ordinary people doing extra ordinary

Mark (39:26.073)
That’s what I pinch myself about every single day. I love it and I love it when we can democratise creativity, when I can democratise storytelling and when I watch someone who was never never confident to tell a story

give a presentation. It’s happened recently. I was working with an organization that do outward bands and the chief executive, I’ve been working with him maybe three times, four times, an hour at a time on Zoom for his talk. And he, to all intents and purposes, all the feedback I have, I’ve had.

delivered the most astonishing talk. It’s not Patagonia, it’s not Nike, it’s not my big clients, it’s not any of that. This is a person whose job it is to help people find themselves by finding a hill. And that, that’s my pinch me moment. And if Martin’s listening, I’m really proud of you. So that’s the thing. It’s those little things, it’s ordinary people doing extra ordinary things that pinch me. That’s amazing.

Victoria Brown (40:33.073)
So in any good story you’ll know the hero encounters setbacks along the way. So what’s the biggest challenge that you’ve had to overcome in your business?

Mark (40:44.17)
God, hundreds of them. like times are tough, right? Times have been tough in the past, they’ll be tough in the future, and we’re just coming out of a tough time. I think

Mark (40:58.898)
Navigating a world that is changing faster than I did and you can pick three or four of those over the last 35 years. That’s been the challenge. And we had a really difficult time.

in 2010, 11, where I left one business and joined with a branding agency who were going to try and help me. It was a dreadful relationship from beginning to end. It burned through tens of thousands of pounds of my savings and was the worst thing I ever did. I learned so much from it, right? So there’s always gold in the mountains. was gold in the shit in there. And that was a particularly tough time.

A few years later I got left by two business partners on the same day. That was really, really tough. One of those was beautifully done. Explained to me what was going on. Everything was great

I still see a lovely man called Tim. And the other one I still haven’t had a conversation about because ghosting is the way they deal with it. It’s fine, right? It’s fine. Now I know what they’re like, then I look at it in a slightly different way. So they’ve been difficult.

Mark (42:18.182)
At the end of COVID, COVID was tough obviously, but at the end of COVID one of my big clients pulled all their innovation work and do a little bit of work on innovation. All their innovation work into a massive, massive agency, an agency that is huge. And they pulled all of the innovation work from lots of small businesses. Now they did that for cost purposes and I understand it, but in reality what they’ve done is they’ve edited the amount of ideas they’re gonna get because they’re going to, you know, want a different idea, you’ve gotta ask different people.

and then not.

And that will change. But that was tough. Managing that loss of income was tough. Nothing insurmountable because I can reframe it now and I can see the patterns and I can see the way the future is going to unfurl. And my job is to play football where the ball is going to be rather than where the ball is. So sometimes those changes force you to do that. And I think that’s a really powerful benefit. to think of it in those senses matters. And to then, you know, begin to think about who

really like to work with, what you’d really like to do, maybe who you’d really like to wake up next to, know, to manifest these things, to put out the possibility into the world that that could happen to you, that you do deserve that, then things unsurprisingly change for you and that’s been my general approach to difficulty.

Victoria Brown (43:38.572)
And I think that’s the key, that reframe. I think, thank you for your honesty, because I think people see people that are far along in the business journey, like you doing all these amazing things to the outside world and think, it’s okay for them. They’ve never had any hardships. They’ve never had any problems to overcome. I get all the bad luck. And when people like you are honest about what you’ve been through and how you reframe things, people think, actually, maybe I can do

Mark (44:04.402)
Totally. I had a really wonderful, I put a post up recently about a particularly difficult time that we had, a few, maybe a decade ago, I can’t remember, where I was sat in a camper van in Margate on a holiday in the rain because I couldn’t afford a drier holiday, warmer holiday, and the kids were all in the cinema and I just sat there feeling sorry for myself and I was crying. I was thinking about what had gone wrong.

And I thought, okay, well, I’ve got two choices. I can either go down with it or I can go change things. So I thought, who would I like to work with? And I kind of manifested this. I imagined, I created an image of a better world, of who I wanted to work with. And they were the big brands, some of which I’ve mentioned already. And I thought, okay, I can see that. I can see that there. Then I went to the next tier down. Who would I like to work with, but I’m not desperate to work with? And I manifested them.

And then I went to the bottom tier, and this is not judgmental in any way. I who there, who is out there that doesn’t know they need me, that I’m not that interested in working with, but they really do need me. And then I went through those and I created this image in my mind, and you can write it down if you wish or whatever. And I came out of the van, almost like born again, thinking, okay, well, I’m wet, I’m

dry off and I’m gonna reformat and I’m gonna start blogging and I’m gonna look at those, I’m have those three tiers and really slowly working with the bottom tier, got my clients in the middle tier and then working with the middle tier, got me literally everyone in that top tier that I wanted to work with, I’ve since worked with. And that was, and someone wrote to me this week, wonderful email, wonderful person, and said, how did you do, I saw your post, what did you do?

what did you actually do? And I told that story and you wrote it and you could draw it and you could just say it into a microphone, it didn’t matter. And if it helps anyone, then that’s fantastic. If it doesn’t, then it did help me.

Victoria Brown (46:10.946)
Yeah, and I think being conscious about that vision is really key because it’s what I talk about on my brand story, Clarity Challenge. If you don’t know what that vision of the future looks like, how are you ever going to get there? How are you going to, because every journey is going to make lots of tiny incremental actions. How can you take the incremental actions in the right direction to get there if you don’t even know where it is?

Mark (46:32.42)
I agree and there’s a wonderful old song and it was covered by Captain Sensible, who’s an old punk and the song goes, Happy, happy, happy talk. It’s much older song than him. If you don’t have a dream, then how are you gonna have a dream come true?

And we can be criticized for being dreamers, romanticists, for being woo woo. But if you can imagine it, maybe it will happen. If you don’t imagine it, how are you gonna know how to do it, where to do it, where to go, what success looks like when you get there? You have to have these dreams because otherwise your eyelids, your field of view becomes so low and so small that you can’t see anything else than where you

So you fail to see possibility, opportunity and patterns.

Victoria Brown (47:28.984)
So with that in mind, what’s your vision for the future now?

Mark (47:34.034)
So, well, I’m changing role, right? So I am 55. I was a young parent and I’m a young grandparent. I’ve got a five -year -old granddaughter and a six -month -old granddaughter. And so my job is to be here for them as long as I can. So I’m going through a transition. I’ve always been, I played rugby at a really high level at RAN, but got quite porky over the years. So I’m going on a health transition at the

but it’s not just physical, it’s emotional and it’s spiritual health transition. And so that’s one side of

Number two, my role is changing and they’re the same roles in many ways. I used to be the like, you know, slightly cocky, slightly unpredictable to use your words. One on the panel talking about sustainability and, and, and those are the punky one. And then every panel I’m on now, I’m the oldest person. I’ve come from being the young upstart to being the oldest person and moving from rebel to authority.

is a really hard transition for some. We go back to what we started with, what we knew were, the thing that worked last time. And actually, over the last 12 months, I’ve become really comfortable with this feeling of authority. Let’s not be a big -headed thing, I’ve just been around a long time.

And the challenges I get now are from the young upstarts and the patients required, I would have been awful thinking back to how I was, the patients required to manage, explain and guide people is there, I have it. So I’m comfortable with that authority. And then the other transition I’ve been through is…

Mark (49:23.794)
there’s this post -COVID shift away from where 60 % of our income was around innovation, it’s now all around sustainability. And it always has been. And we’ve seen a great rush of creative agencies

People who do innovation are now like, I’m a storyteller, I’m an environmental person now. We’re all about sustainability now. And it’s a bit like in 1988 when dance music arrived on the back of Chicago House and the MDMA, the Ecstasy Explosion. All the indie bands went, yeah, we’ve always been into dance music. No, you haven’t, but it is great and it’s okay. And I just think that we’re seeing the same, I call it green rushing. It’s like this green rush to everyone’s

try and do so. And there’s lots of them getting it wrong and that’s okay. I’d rather them try than not get it wrong. But I do think at some point there’s some humility required from some of those agencies to say, we’re sorry. We’ve been selling things that people didn’t need. The world couldn’t sustain them and the customer couldn’t afford the years on a dream of a better life. And we’re sorry, because this is what a better life looks like.

We’re never gonna see that. So that transition is interesting for me. So, because that’s where I’ve always sat. This feeling of authority and longevity is something I’m actually enjoying. It tickles the ego. It pokes the ego because no one really wants to get old, but I’m enjoying that shift from warrior.

into kind of authority. That’s a very interesting thing. So there are my big three transitions. The way the business will grow, we’re going to carry on doing the carbon, we’re going to carry on doing the measures. You don’t measure it, you can’t manage it. It’s going to be more about strategy, vision, individual projects. That’s where that’s going to go. I’m going to always carry on doing my presentation skills workshops because it really, really, that workshop really shifts people and helps people. Got a new workshop coming out called

Mark (51:28.404)
improving the art of living and that’s that’s gonna be a really lovely kind 360 degree what it is to be human because being human matters and and that’s it yes loads there health work

Victoria Brown (51:43.118)
It’s amazing. Is that all?

Mark (51:45.296)
relationships, there’s probably more. I’m going to carry on my Qigong. I got all the middle class white man vices, the stone roses, Qigong carving spoons, riding my bike in Lycra. Got them all and I’m embracing the person that is that person. I’d like to learn to sing actually Victoria. That’s the only thing that I’ve, yeah, I’ve got all of the desires to be a lead singer and none of the talent.

Victoria Brown (52:05.132)
Okay.

Mark (52:11.3)
So I live it vicariously through going to see bands no one’s ever heard of so I can feel slightly cooler than I should.

Victoria Brown (52:19.116)
Okay, so any singing teachers out there listening?

Mark (52:22.674)
Please get in touch. I’m beyond help.

Victoria Brown (52:26.776)
And if people want to get in touch with you, Mark, where can they find you?

Mark (52:30.994)
Super easy, markshaler .com or thisisape .co .uk, at Mark Shaler on Instagram, at Green Ape on Twitter. I’m super easy to find. Google my name and you’ll find out. On Amazon there’s books and there’s also the books are available in small independent stores too.

Victoria Brown (52:52.472)
You’re everywhere. Well, thank you so much for your time today.

Mark (52:55.364)
I hope so.

Mark (53:00.572)
Thank you and carry on doing what you’re doing. It’s amazing.