Episode 12: It’s All About Attitude With Mark Schulman

Transcript:

I am so excited about our show today. I have the honor and privilege of having Mark Schulman on my show today. Mark has enjoyed an unprecedented career over the last 32 years as a first call drummer for world-class rock and pop artists. He was voted ‘Top 3 Pop-Rock Drummers’ in the Modern Drummer Reader's Poll in 2014 and was the featured cover artist in the May 2019 issue of Modern Drummer. Mark has done four record breaking world tours with P!NK and continues to work with her after 14 years.

Mark’s resume reads like a “Who’s Who” of international Rock n’ Roll royalty including acts such as Cher, Billy Idol, Foreigner, Sheryl Crow, Stevie Nicks, Beyonce and so many other world–class artists. Mark has appeared on nearly every American, European and Australian variety show including The Grammys, David Letterman, The Tonight Show, Jon Stewart, American Idol, X-Factor, ….and so many more.

Mark's also an author with his first book, Conquering Life’s Stage Fright and now working on his second book on attitude, we talk about those in detail during our conversation. He now spends a great deal of time as an international corporate speaker for clients such as American Express, Microsoft, IBM, DELL Cisco, Aveda. As a celebrity speaker, Mark provides three simple concepts to boost attitude and performance for all attendees through compelling stories about working with world class artists.

And music isn't Mark's only driving force. He was the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Create Now, a non- profit organization founded in 1996 to help change troubled children's lives through creative arts mentoring. A cancer survivor himself, Mark has also motivated children and teens through his work doing seminars with the Ronald McDonald House and benefits for the Teenage Cancer Trust in the UK.

He's a proud husband and father who are the center of his life. I just love this man, his energy and overwhelming big heart are inspiring.  I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.   

Cindie: Well welcome Mark! It's such an honor to have you on my show today. Thank you!

Mark: Cindie, you're one of my favorite people. You've just been incredible to me and my family and it's my honor.

Cindie: Thank you.

Mark: You truly are one of the most giving people that I know and is exemplified by the fact that you're now doing a podcast 'cause you want to continue to give and I always love to support people that are that way so.

Cindie: I certainly appreciate it and you know as I was preparing for our talk I realized how much we had in common. We're both from LA, we're both cancer survivors, I think we both have a great appreciation for being alive after that and grateful and love of music. I heard you in a different interview and you had talked about, you had heard that somebody didn't like music and you were just completely baffled by that. And I can certainly relate you. When I listen to music I hear it in every cell of my body. My hobby is dance so when you talked about that I was just completely resonated with me so.

But, as you mentioned, my podcast is really all about making the second half of life amazing through my five pillars of good health and one of those pillars is feeding your mind good thoughts. And you know when I met you, you were our keynote speaker at our SITE Southeast event in Charleston SC. And you had us all fired up and we were just high energy and it was clear to me then that you were definitely all about feeding your mind good thoughts and I really can't think of a better person to talk to about the consequences of thoughts the consequences of attitude. And I really think your work comes from the heart. And it comes from love, so.

Mark: Well I, yeah please go on.

Cindie: I was just going to say before we go any further, you just have such a great story so you know when I wanted you to tell us your story and how you became interested in music.

Mark: Well my story, I'm very, very fortunate in that I believe that it was sort of predetermination that drums chose me I didn't choose drums because I was like two years old I saw The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. Right? Glued to the TV I saw John and George and Paul and that's like something resonated deep inside. Then I saw Ringo, you know that big beautiful nose and that smile on the way it was like switching his hands and then I saw the screaming girls. Girls and rock and roll always went together. I always love girls. When all the little boys and in elementary school made fun of them like give'em throw them my way so I was like, I want that! And I said, "come on mom I wanna play drums!" and she's like, "no can you play a nice instrument  like your brother Randy?" You know he plays violin. So I used to go to my brothers violin lessons 'cause my godfather was his teacher and there was this, looked like a tall violin standing in the corner. I said "I'll play that, that looks cool". Turned out to be cello. So I ended up playing cello. And then I used to get little drum lesson from my godfather after every cello lesson. But I could really play. I really intuitively know what to do. I sat down at a drum set at the neighbors house when I was five and I could just play the beat and I knew I knew about the drums and about the symbols even somehow knew about the brands. And you know I used to look through the Sears catalog and my parents would go out on the weekends we have a babysitter I'd put a chair up and I bring the Sears catalog for those of you old enough to remember that and have the page open to the drums and my parents started by me like a snare drum then a cymbal, then a high hat. Then finally at 9 years old they bought me my first drum set. I did my first professional gig at 12 and I never looked back.

Cindie: What? At 12?

Mark:  Well I did drugs for three years at that point. You can't stop a guy like me. I mean as I said, I all I did was playing I give my parents so much love and gratitude because they were two college professors whose bedroom is right next door to their son who has drums who plays every spare moment. You know, and they, they supported me so unbelievably well considering they didn't, they didn't under really empathize with a passion so much. I mean my mother used to write parodies to shows and and you know she was she would write poetry and blah blah but they didn't understand the depth of the drive. My brother had the same drive with my brother never chose music is as a career. So for not understanding the depth of the drive of what I had. I'll tell you they would always talk about how I had such a high IQ and of course this is just a hobby and I went to college and I was going to be you know a doctor, a lawyer, attorney, whatever. Then I quit college after two years and started playing full time. But then when I got my first road gig at 26 you know they were like, "oh he's making money, OK I guess there's something to this drumming thing".  You know. But you know in between I had a chance to audition for my first big gig and I was this band called Bad English they were a super group it was the guys from Journey and John Waite the British singer. And I thought I was ready and I just screwed that one up so badly 'cause I was, was had so much stage fright and had just then been on stage and never had stage fright.  I was so afraid, I was rushing so badly which rushing is as a drummer the worst thing you can possibly do. So I literally made two promises to myself. That became a very defining day for me. I thought I was going to get the gig and instead it was the day that I made the decision whether I was going to quit or keep going because I made two promises. The first promises is I'm I'm nobody's ever going to tell me I'm speeding up or slowing down unless I want to speed up or slow down and I spent the next two years working my butt off to create really precise internal meter which is important for every musician. And the other promise I made to myself was, I was going to transfer that fear into confidence and that's what ended up leading me to write my first book, Conquering Life's Stage Fright, Three Steps to Top Performance. So you know and to this day nobody's ever told I told me I'm speeding up or slowing down unless I want to speed up or slow down 'cause music is organic and there's nothing wrong with tempos changing it's just that know that you're doing it so you don't have somebody else saying hey man you're speeding up or slowing down therefore you're fired. Or you're playing a song and P!nks in the air or you got dancers in the air that relying on you literally their lives are relying on you and you darn well better have perfect meter and perfect tempo and be perfectly in sync or you're going to trigger them to fall. So you know it's all gonna pay off. So that's my story and then I followed that path. And how I got into speaking, just very briefly is,  part of my past because I had these two professorial  teaching parents, it was in the blood. Right? So I started teaching when I was 19 and my mom let me my mom rented a tutorial center, gave me my own class to tutor in English. My dad had a PhD in grammar and composition. Then I started doing drum clinics. You know when you get up in front of drummers and start teaching and stuff and tell stories. Well I did probably a 1000 drum clinics and at a point I realized I could transfer all this information from this small microcosm of drummers to other people and use music as the metaphor for top performance. Because I had also met doctor Jim who's like the mentor of my life and I stopped drinking and doing drugs and got real serious about self you know doing internal work and studying philosophy and, and I realize that the people were getting more out of my stories in my success stories and my success coaching so to speak then they were my chops even as drummers. So I thought I could make a really valuable presentation for the collision in corporate market. So then I worked my ass off to study the corporate market and studied with two speaking coaches and an acting coach and a director and a storyteller and I refined my presentation.

My very first big presentation for IBM was a big bomb. I tend to be the guy that has really big failures that I learned from but come to find out that you know the greatest most accomplished inventors and entrepreneurs and wealthy people all had huge failures. So part of it is being willing to fail and being willing to fail big. As my big failures are what I learned the most from because they shock you and they make you realize OK I you know if, if for lack of any other reason you don't want to do that again which is a negative goal. But for me was like, what can I do that is going to work putting it in a sort of a positive goal stance because that's my philosophy is double negative goals your mind focuses on whatever you want to focus if you focus on what you don't want that's what you get so you damn well better change that focus to something that you want then you can move forward and you could become proactive. So that's my stick, I know I talked a lot but that's my whole shtick.

Cindie: No, I love it! I love it! You know, it's so real Lisa Nichols, I don't know if you heard of Lisa Nichols but.

Mark:  Yes, of course.

Cindie: Oh my God! My favorite is, "The best gifts in life are wrapped in sandpaper" and I love that. It's my mantra

Mark: Awesome! I love that! If she hadn't said it already I'd just plagiarize it but I won't. She's too good.

Cindie:  She's awesome. I just love that because equally. You know when I look in life's review mirror, those things that I went through, like you, they were painful, they were scratchy gifts but man I'm not I'm here today because of those things that happened and what you're describing the same thing it's just a universal truth.

Mark: Well when it comes to Covid I learned quite a few things. First of all I never thought I could recreate. You know like you saw me live. It's all energy it's drumming it's a lot of great content but it's like lot of interactivity I was the guy that I could never recreate this virtually. And what I discovered about Covid, what I discovered period about these big life changing situations it's all how we manage change. And there's two ways to manage change. You either embrace it or you resist it and I was resisting it. You realize this was going to be my windfall year. I have 19 gigs, speaking gigs in March and April. I worked my butt off to get up to that point and all of them got either postponed or cancelled. And I was like and I was really resisting Covid and the change in the virtual performance and then I woke up one day and I said quit telling yourself some BS story about why you can't do it and I embraced the change. Then I created this incredible virtual presentation and now I'm doing virtual speeches. You know as we wait for the live ones to come back. But I can have as much impact. I pre-recorded the drums but there still getting the drums, I still do the interactivity that content's the same, I'm still high energy at this huge green screen so they see all this concert footage and I navigated I really worked hard to understand and to navigate how I could create as much value virtually as I do live. But I needed to release you know embrace the change rather than resist it. And the moment I embraced it I got really, really creative 'cause when you embrace it you think of things you've never thought of before and whereas you resist it you're creating fear and trepidation and resisting the what you resist persist and you focus on the resistance and that's what's caused so much trauma and so many challenges with Covid is people not recognizing opportunities and not being willing to embrace the change rather than resist it.

Cindie: Exactly! It's a choice, you can say I was on I was on furlough I don't know if I'm going to have a job I don't you know but instead it's a gift that God or universe gave me this moment and in this moment I have an opportunity now to pursue a life's dream. And how am I going to do that? So, yes you don't want to give energy to what you don't want you want to give energy to what you do want. I think the best person that that described that was Mother Teresa. She said she would never ever participate in an anti-war rally but she would always participate in a peace rally and that stuck with me, right? 

Mark: Perfect.  Mother Teresa, she had something going on, didn't she?

Cindie: She did! She did. Your first book, Nerve Breakers, Conquering Life's Stage Fright, you know gives great strategies for confidence and now your second book talking about the astonishing power of your attitude really does bring clarity to such powerful empowering concepts. When did you start writing this second book?

Mark: Well I'm writing it with doctor Jim, my mentor because the foundation of the book is actually his concept and this is my flagship speech now and I found that it's created so much change for people and it's been so formidable and it's based on the power of attitude. And essentially as we know now more than ever we can't control what happens to us most of the time. Things like this coming up and it's shocking and frightening but we always have the power to choose change or control our attitudes about what happens to us. You have the power right now to choose your attitude and it puts the power back in your lap back in your hands because your attitude is your vantage point or your disadvantage point depending on the attitude you choose. And your attitude, the way that the way that you view yourself and the way that you view your the world or lens through which you see the world is based on the stories you tell yourself and the meaning you attach to people, places and circumstances. And that's based on the attitude that you choose. So what's your story? Is your story a comedy? Is it a melodrama? Is it a murder mystery? But what makes attitude so potent is it's the foundation of this formula that doctor Jim created that is incredible. Think about this, your attitude is what drives your behavior. And one attitude can drive multiple behaviors in your behavior is what determines the consequences of your life and the formula is AxB = C and if you look at it that way you realize, Oh my God! If I consciously shift my attitude right now and then what I do when I speak as I give examples of attitude ships in the stories about P!nk shifting her attitude and Tony Hsieh's shifting his attitude and how that really works. So my question to like listeners now and I question my audience now. The challenge is when you hear about a potential life changing formula where you know that you really do have that power of changing or controlling  It's because I give examples of attitude ships in stories about pink shifting are attitude and Tony hsieh's shifting his attitude and how that really works so my question to like listeners now and I question my audience now. The challenge is when you hear about a potential life changing formula where you know that you really do have that power of changing or controlling your attitude in the moment. Are you the kind of person who ignores it? Are you the kind of person who is interested? Or are you the kind of person who is committed? Because if you ignore it, you never know, you don't know what you don't know. You don't know what you're missing. If you're interested, you might try it. You might incorporate it. You might tell yourself some story as to why it doesn't work. If you're committed, you just do it! And so for me, daily attitude shifting. And if you're committed what we discovered is the best way to implement it is to reverse engineer it and get outrageous! Think of the greatest consequences you could possibly imagine. Let your mind go crazy. Step outside your comfort zone. Go way beyond your comfort zone. Go way outside of the box. I just busted the box because I've found that the world class begins where your comfort zone ends. And if you could think of the most amazing outcomes then you backtracked and you think what behaviors or actions would you need to do constantly manifest or create and you can write them down to drive these consequences. But what happens is we most societies but most of us have been taught that it's all about behavior modification and it starts with their behavior. No! You gotta go back and think about your attitude first the attitude is the initial driver. Your attitude is the operating system so to speak. What attitudes would you need to consciously create or choose or shift. Sometimes I shift my attitude multiple times in a day and I may stop and I'm creating a conscious attitude ship right now what's going to serve me. It's going to serve me to be joyful. It's going to serve me to be positioned. It's going to serve me serve me to be kind. It's going to serve me too, like I say with my wife, I'd rather be happy than right. It's going to serve me to be happy rather than right and that's going to drive a very different behavior producing very different consequences. 

Cindie: Absolutely. It's a game changer. You know the AxB=C, it sounds quite simple but when you start to peel it back, it's quite profound. 

Mark: It is. Let's face it. You don't want complicated, the simple stuff is what works 'cause there's so many complex psychological formulas and so much complexity in psychology. You know when I was researching my first book, I don't know if you have you have heard of Google Scholar. There's a whole other level of Google call Google Scholar that's all like research papers and PhD's and I, you know, went down that hole of psychology really. Because you know conquering like stage fright was based on another triad called; clarity, capability and confidence. Meaning if you have extremely clear you have to have real clarity about your goal and then that dictates the capability you need to develop and once you develop the capability that brings you naturally to confidence. So the confidence is real. Like I tell people. If I get on stage and I am not capable in other words I don't know the songs I should be scared! I went down that hole of researching clarity and capability in the psychological ramifications. It can get super, super complex. But when I'm here to write a book, I interviewed a lot of top performers and when I'm there to speak I want it simple like we're talking now want people to be able to walk away from this conversation being able to just immediately employ what I say and be able to take it and use it for their highest good. That's the idea. So simplicity is king and brevity can be king.

Cindie: True! Because I can now, taking that AxB=C, if for whatever reason and I start to get an attitude that doesn't serve me and it doesn't serve how I want to show up in the world I can just quickly think about, wait a minute, this attitude is not going to serve me let me back up you know put my minivan in reverse in my brain minivan and say wait a minute let me take another route because it's not going to serve me going this route. So I'll actually,

Mark:  Especially when you're clear about the outcome. If you know what the outcome is want to be then you backtrack and you will figure out. Because there are lots of different attitude you know the attitudes they talk about as you might remember from my speech. I talk about first of all the simple attitude of smiling. And that sounds so cheesy to so many people but the first thing I do is part of my morning ritual. I immediately wake up and I say 24 more beautiful hours and I smile. And the smile maybe fake at first but when it becomes real and there are many studies that show that when you smile you're activating hundreds of muscles in your face that literally send a signal to your body too relax and they send a signal to your mind release endorphins. So sometimes I'll just consciously smile and I gotta tell you works! It's freaky and shifts my attitude right then and there. And then the attitude of shifting your "have to's" to "get to's". You probably remember that. Oh my God! I've gotten so many emails from people about how that simple little shift when you look at something as a "get to" instead of a "have to". Because a "have to" feels like a chore and a "get to" feels like a choice. You're reframing it in your head. And your mind just listens to what you do. Remember your mind is actually, you are senior to your mind we'll say. There's something driving your mind, your spirit, your soul, whatever you want to call it. So when you make a decision and you want to create a shift something your mind goes OK we're going to go there now. And shifting "have to" to a "get to" also a "have to" feels like you're the effect where as the "get to" feels like you're the cause. And every single one of us would much rather be the cause of what we want then the effect of what we do not want and think about the power of that. It's so simple! So I can apply that to anything. And even my daughter, it's like you know all I have acting class she's only 10. Well you don't "have to" have acting class Zade, her name is Zade, you "get to" have acting class because you're becoming a world class actor at 10. She's got the best agent, best manager and she's doing great!  So I try to like get my family to reframe it. But up to the individual. If the individual decides they're going to reframe something, and you simply do it as I say, you commit, you can create behaviors and consequences you never imagine possible. It's within your reach.

Cindie: So with your career, what role did attitude play in the development of your amazing success?

Mark: Every place along the way. It was my attitude. It was the decisions it was decisions that I made which were based on my attitude. You know I used to tell the Richard Marx story. How I went to meet with Richard Marx this manager Richmond March was a popular artist in the late 80's and 90's. At the time he was selling out arenas and I'm you know we went to meet with the manager about another artist. And I said, "you know I really want to play with Richard Marx I heard through the grapevine that he's looking for a new drummer." And I said, "I would love the opportunity", to the manager. So I was ballsy enough to shift my attitude. Now this was a very volatile manager. So he could have gotten really angry and he could have just said he got a lot of nerve get the hell out of my office. But instead he's like, "I'll tell you what man, listen, if you really want to play with Richard there's twenty other drummers. I'll put you in line you can audition with all the other drummers." And I thought, wait a minute. I gotta think of something else. I gotta shift my energy. What else can I do? And then on the spot I thought, well why don't you, that's right, he had told me that they were going to play one more just promotional gig for the radio stations. There was a small little gig that drummer was going to do and then he was leaving 'cause he wanted to leave the band and be with his family and then they were going to additional these drummers. And I said, "Alan, why don't you let me play that last gig? That could be like my audition and I could save you the time and energy in the money of auditioning all these people." You know I was speaking the way managers speak. I was assuming his viewpoint, assuming his attitude. And you know, I'm on the phone with this guy going, "what's he going to say?" It's like,  "interesting idea. I'll tell you what, let me call you back. I was gonna do it 'cause I talked to Richard he wants to meet you." Sure enough, I met with Richard, he liked me. He let me play the gig. I got the gig and I did my first big rock and roll world tour.

Cindie: Wow.

Mark: I mean it's an attitude shift baby that's like making a conscious decision

Cindie: Exactly, exactly. So, you know, you touched on this but I want to reframe it again because I think it's really, I love your message about how to overcome stage fright. Because, you know, it even if you are a musician performing in front of 1000 people or you're at work having to present a project or even presenting at PTA, right? I think everyone feels that angst or anxiety when they need to get up in front of people. So you were talking about the three C's so I kind of want to rewind and frame it from there so people understand how we can under daily basis use this in important tactic to help us get through that.

Mark: Well I have 24 chapters and they all approach it from a slightly different perspective and then there are actually action steps that you can do at the end of each chapter. Because we all sort of learn differently and we all resonate with  different things. But essentially I mean clarity, capability, confidence is so critical because if you have a clear goal because here's the thing to remember about fear. To begin with, the chemistry in the body for fear and excitement are identical it's just our perception and our projection that determine our experience. I'm not talking about life threatening fear I'm not talking bout stepping in front of a bus or having somebody to hold a gun to your head. But everything else, all that stage fright all the trepidation, all our unwillingness to communicate or not pick up the phone or or getting overwhelmed before we're going to go in for a job interview or we're going to get a presentation. That's all just bullshit. It's all stuff that we're telling, its stories we're telling ourselves based on our perception. So if you understand that you have a clear goal. What's your goal? I want to give a presentation I'm going to give a presentation to my employees but for some reason I've decided or I have a prejudice in my mind that I am scared about that but this is fear where you could actually reframe it so it can actually be excitement. So what is your goal? Your goal is you're going to give a presentation. So do you have absolute clarity about what you're going to say? If you have absolute clarity about what you're going to say. Have you rehearsed the presentation? Do you know exactly, have you developed your capability so even if you are so overwhelmed with anxiety you can still do it.

Cindie: So that's the second C confidence, right?

Mark: No no, that's capability.    'cause what usually happens is confidence best capability it was what happens is the anxiety usually wanes or wears off in about 45 seconds anyway. Once you get started and you're in the flow it kind of, it kind of wears down and that's where the capability is really critical because you haven't done the work. I mean I run my speech every day Cindie. I get on the treadmill, I run three to four miles and I run my basic speech every day hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times and I still do it. I've given a 1000 speeches and I still practice it. Because there are still times where my brain space is out. But I have such confidence, real confidence because I practiced it so much. So the more if you really feel nervous or anxious about something just do more things to develop a greater level of capability because that will lead you to real confidence. Tony Hsieh's an example. Good friend of mine that he created Zappos. He was a CEO is a billionaire. You know, he gives a lot of speeches and this guy does not have to give speeches. He does it just for fun. He's a billionaire. But he says he always has stage fright right before he goes on. So what he does is he's created this one story that he's with her so many times because he knows the stage fright is going to subside that he gets up and tells the story it takes by 45 seconds of watching is the average of for him for to subside or a minute and he knows about the end of the story will have calmed down and he knows his story so damn well that his body can be shaking and he can still affectively tell the story and not crumble. Get it? So these are little tactics. You know.

Here's another thing about stage fright, another little secret. It's good to have a little stage fright. It's good to have a little, not anxiety but almost like, you know, it makes you aware, it  gives you adrenaline. You know it's like if I get on stage and feel nothing I'm worried because you need to feel something it's part of the human experience is part of what drives us and what motivates us part of the excitement that fear excitement paradigm that we can flip, you know. I want to have a little bit of the butterflies in the stomach. Every time I go on stage, I've play with P!nk 800 times. I still have butterflies, I should have butterflies in the stomach because if I don't have butterflies then I'm not really connecting with the excitement. Because excitement unto itself will rev-up your body. And remember because the fear are essentially the same chemistry you want that heightened awareness and you can use that. And so these are all little things that I, that you can read about my book or you're just learning right now, just from listening. Just so you know, we've been on, on for third less than 30 minutes and I feel like we've given people a lot of really valuable information and that's what I want to do. I'm like you, I just want to be of service.

You know rock the people are the concept of the Rockstar, let me debunk right now or my perception of a Rockstar. You know people hire me 'cause I'm a celebrity rock and roll drummer. That's great and I love playing the role and it's wonderful. But the reality is, I'm there to be of service to you. When I get on stage, I finally realized that my job is to be of service to P!nk, to the band, to the audience, to the crew. My job is to make everybody else's life easier 'cause I'm pretty easy to please. Even my family. You know as I said earlier I rather be happy than right with my wife. So if I'm there to be of service I'm also a drummer and drummers are pretty we're kind of like the shepherds 'cause we're foundational like look at us is like the you know the foundation of the building so to speak and everything is built on us. So everybody around me is cool and taken care of I'm fine I don't have a large expectation. Also I've learned the importance of listening rather than you know, if you're in a band or on a team and everybody wants to talk and you're the one that listens. Man people want you in their band, they want you on their team because you're the one that listens.  We were talking last night, we have a lot of friends and we have certain friends we've been doing social distancing with. But my wife just adores one of our friends, Til. Till has a PhD, he's an economist at UCLA. He's brilliant, he's been interviewed by all the big news people lately 'cause of the economy. But Till is such a great listener and he's one of the few people that when they come over, asks my wife, you know my wife's a writer and she's developed writing a screenplay. He always asks her about, her. You know, I am very careful you know I ask people about them how are you doing what can I do for you? You've seen my emails. They always end with, Cindie what can I do for you?  I want to be of service to people. My goal in life is to be of service. I'm here to be a service. I'm a conduit. You know drums chose me so how dare I have a big ego as a drummer when drums chose me. I mean I did the work but so the hell what? You know, even as a speaker I'm a conduit of information. I realized that I got my parents skill of teaching so I can I leverage my celebrity to be able to get gigs with high end clients like you know American Express and IBM and Dell and Walmart and SAP because I want to be of service. Not because of my ego. And you know, one of my favorite parts of speaking live, the only thing I can't do virtually is speaking live and you saw it, it's like, the line after my speech for people to take photos and get autographs in to chat and to connect always takes longer than my speech.

Cindie: Yes! You are just such an open heart! You know one thing that's always stuck with me is, "what will matter is not what we've learned but what we've taught" and you just exude love and you just exude this excitement. My mantra is, "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction."  and our choices is to live. And then there's this thing about vibration. That love vibrates at a very high frequency, hate vibrates at a very low frequency. The way I show up in life is I decided and I have chosen to vibrate at the frequency of love. Because at that point I am controlling my environment. Equal and opposite, than my world becomes that. And I see that so much in you as well. I, you know, it's just so I heard you talk about something that I absolutely loved as well and it was a during an interview and you said, "I remain open". I love that! I think it's part of your book and attitude and being open and vulnerable leaves such great space for new ideas and new ways of seeing things and I would imagine as and artist and creator it's critical. So talk a little about your thoughts about remaining open.

Mark: Well, I am humbled by all of the brilliance on this planet and the more I learn the more I realize I don't know. So, and when you talk at the very beginning of this interview you talked about feeding your mind good things that is what I do every single day. I'm always listening to podcasts and reading books. I'm reading Malcolm Gladwell's new book. I love Tom Bilyeu and his podcast, Impact Theory because he interviews the greatest thinkers and philosophers an entrepreneurs and I'm always listening and learning. I'm always upping my game and I'm always evolving my speech. Because to me, as I get older I just want to learn more because that keeps us. You know or either growing or dying, right? So I don't want to be dying, I want to be growing. I got a 10 year old. I'm in my 50s. I mean I want to be the centurion man and I want to have something to say. I want to be speaking in 30 years. So you know, I just beginning. You know, to me like the great speakers to me are the rock stars now. Like I look at the people I'm friends with, the wonderful speakers, they're my rock stars now because I want to be you know the greatest speaker I can be, you know. So I just believe it's just critical. And also another thing I want to add to your concept of love and the vibration of love. Because one of the things you can do with this concept of ABC, attitude, behavior, consequences is realized that you have the power to impact and influence the attitudes and behaviors and consequences of others. And how you do that is by assuming their viewpoint which is essentially their attitude. And one thing I've discovered is that to me the people that are the most fulfilled the most successful in any business are the ones that are more concerned about the well being and the attitude of their clients than they are about their product or service. Because you have the ability by doing the due diligence to finding out, to doing more research about where your client is coming from, who they are, what happened to them that day, what's going on with their kids. Because every decision your client makes is based on their attitude, first about themselves, about you and about their brand. But if you put their well being before the sale or the service that you are trying to get you want, you can produce behavior and consequences in them and in yourself you never imagined possible. And so one of my mandates before I go on stage is that I'm going to love my audience. And as a matter of fact I don't even look at my customers and clients as customers and clients. I look at them as relationships because every bit of success I've ever had is based on relationships I've cultivated and that's why to me it's not business everything is personal. And this is the way that I view it.

Cindie: Correct. Kindled spirits. Let me just tell you. That is exactly how I navigate through my work.  This ties so closely to another comment you made about intention and Michael Beckwith talks about intention.

Mark: Aww he's awesome. I've seen him many times 'cause I used to go to AGAPE. I live in Culver City. His congregation is in Culver City.

Cindie: I've been there a couple times. So he talks about our society not having an "attention deficit disorder" but an "intention deficit disorder". Right? And what you are talking about know really ties to that. You talk about intention but it is that intention getting up onstage right what is that if your intention is love and it makes all the difference in the world when you do that.

Mark: My intention is to be of service. When I say my little, sort of, what are the words I'm looking for? My mantra before I go onstage is that, you know, I want everybody to get as much as they can and resonate as much as they can and have my presentation and the information I'm giving them exceed their expectations. It's all about them, them, them, them. Not, "hey I hope I'm grate and I hope they like me!". No, the only thing I say about myself is I put my mantra out there for me to be "on" you know, like remember all of my content in a flowing way and present it in a way that the audience really, really resonates and they walk away with more than they expected. So again, I turn it back to them. It's always about them.

Cindie: So last question. What is the biggest payoff from being a great artist?

Mark: Being able to lift people into another state. Whether I'm on stage playing drums, I mean, when we're out there with P!nk I know that she's literally, 'cause I could see to the audiences eyes, we're as a group, including the 225 crew members we couldn't live without, we're raising the vibration of the audience. We're raising their state. We're taking them out of their regular lives and giving them hope, giving them an experience. Of course through the music, through the message, through the unity of everybody being together and that's what I want to create when I give a speech, I want people to walk away feeling better about themselves and like they have an understanding of how they can do that.

Cindie: That's fantastic. So Mark, when is your book going to be out and where can we find it? And then, where can we find you if we have folks that want to book you for a speaking engagement?

Mark: You can always find out more about me and see so many so many videos and so much information at mark@markschulman.com All of my social media, my Instagram and my Twitter are @markyplanet And my personal email is mark@markschulman.com You can always email me directly either about questions you have or confirmations or stories or information or of course you know inquiries about speaking gigs or private coaching or. And about the book, not sure yet because the book is still being written. I'm interviewing all kinds of amazing people from Howie Mandel to Michael Fronte to Grant Cardone to Tony Hsieh to Jim Abbott the, you know, one handed pitcher that pitched a no hitter against the Yankees, all kinds of people.

Cindie: Wow! You're really putting your heart and soul in this book.

Mark: Yeah. And so, we're in the middle of writing it and we're not, we don't have a deadline. I have a great book agent and we're either going to get to go with the publisher or we may self published depending upon what we want to do. I have my own publicist anyway. But my current book, Conquering Life's Stage Fright is still available on Amazon. And we don't even have a name for the new book. I mean, the name of my speech is; Hacking the Rock Star Attitude . The book might take that name or it might not, we don't know yet but it will be chock full of amazing information and I love interviewing others to get their perspective on attitude so it's not just about our perspective.

Cindie: Absolutely and I'll have all that information in the show notes as well which can be found on my website. So I'll be sharing that as well. So Mark, I am so grateful. Thank you so much for your time today, you are just awesome!

Mark: Cindie you're awesome! You told me your mantra, may leave you with my mantra? Leave people and things better than when I found them.

Cindie:  Love it! I'm going to keep that near my heart. Big virtual hugs and please pass that on to your beautiful wife and your beautiful miracle daughter. 

Mark: I will…..Thank you for everything you've done for us.

Cindie: Absolutely.

Mark:  I am so honored to have been on this. Your questions are fantastic and thanks again!

Cindie: You're welcome Mark. Thank you.

Well I hope you enjoyed our conversation. Mark is just such high energy and his energy is contagious.

Thank you for joining me today. Make sure you log on to my website at www.ifnotnowwhen.best to join our community. Wishing you peace, love, joy and good health. Bye for now. 

References:

Instagram and my Twitter are @markyplanet

mark@markschulman.com

His website: www.markschulman.com

The link to Mark's first book:  https://www.amazon.com/Conquering-Lifes-Stage-Fright-Performance/dp/0996659404/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Conquering+Life%27s+Stage+Fright&qid=1602423155&sr=8-1