Announcer: Welcome to Behind the Mic, presented in part by CAPS, the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers. This podcast is dedicated to recognizing excellence in speaking through fascinating stories and interesting conversations with the people who make the speaking world

Roxanne Derhodge: come

Announcer: alive. Now, please welcome your Behind the Mic hosts, Roxanne Derhodge and Carl Richards.

Roxanne Derhodge: Hi, everyone. It's Roxanne Derhodge. I have the privilege today to pilot our first podcast with the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers. I'm delighted to be here with my co-host, Carl Richards. And our first guest is Mark Black, and I will let Carl tell us a little bit about Mark.

Carl Richards: Thanks, Roxanne. Mark Black, CSP and CAPS president 2025, is the only man in history to run a marathon after receiving a heart and double lung transplant. A resilience expert, coach, and author, Mark helps people break through limitations and develop resilience so they can thrive through challenge and change. Now Mark's been a very active CAPS member for almost 20 years. After a while, you lose count, but we're so glad that Mark is here today.

Carl Richards: Mark, welcome to the podcast.

Mark Black: Thanks, Carl, Roxanne. Glad to be here. Excited for the podcast. This is exciting.

Roxanne Derhodge: Amazing. And so much went into having this actually happen, so the privilege is all ours to have you as the incoming president to start things off. So, Mark, a logical question that I think most people would want to know is, obviously, you've been through a lot. And as you're going through this, the adversity brings a space that obviously is quite difficult, but then you start to talk about it. So your path, I think, is important because I want to know, how do you go from all the surgeries and the things that must have put you in a difficult spot to speaking.

Roxanne Derhodge: So if you could share with us kind of that path, I would love to know how that began.

Mark Black: Sure. Yeah. Probably not unlike many CAPS members. I came to speaking by accident. I was invited so I had my heart-lung transplant.

Mark Black: I'm from Moncton, New Brunswick, which is a city of, you know, 70,000, 80,000 people, give or take, which means when something like that happens, it gets in the newspaper. So, like, you know, local people were aware. And I started to get requests after I came back home to go do the, you know, the rubber chicken circuit. Right? The Rotary clubs and the things like that.

Mark Black: And I was requested by a principal at the local high school to come and do the high school graduation presentation. Basically, the last person between the graduates and their party. In other words, the person they are least interested in hearing from, you know, a ten-minute speech. So I put together something that I thought might be useful and did my ten minutes. And I think, you know, by and large, it went as well as it can go given that, again, I don't think they really cared.

Mark Black: But one of the parents at the reception that I was invited to afterwards came up to me and asked for my business card. I was working at an insurance company at the time. I did not have a business card. I didn't know what he was asking for a business card for. And so I probably looked a little dumbfounded, and he said, well, that's what you do.

Mark Black: Right? And I said, what are you talking about? And he said, well, speaking like that thing you do, like, telling your I said, oh, that's a, like, that's a thing?

Roxanne Derhodge: And he

Mark Black: said, yeah. I think, you know, we bring people into my company to do that, and I think we pay them quite well. And I kinda lean in and go, tell me more about that. And he did. And they never hired me, but that man, who I do not know, started my career because I kinda went back home and went, maybe this is a thing I could think about doing and started, you know, googling and doing the things that we do to figure out how to start this thing called speaking.

Carl Richards: And how long from there, Mark, was it before you got on the next stage and started to do this, you know, really take the not that that wasn't serious, but before you really started

Mark Black: to look

Carl Richards: at this as a business?

Mark Black: That's a great question, Carl. I think it probably took three years for me just to really decide this was going to be the thing that I pursued as a career. I did a couple of years. I started speaking after that mostly in schools, and I did that for a couple of reasons. One, I was 24, so I thought, what credibility do I have?

Mark Black: And I've never had a quote, unquote, real job. That was my thing. I was like, I've never worked in an office in my life. I don't know about the corporate world. So I thought, where do I have credibility?

Mark Black: Well, I just graduated, you know, university a few years ago. I was gonna be a teacher. I have all this student leadership experience. I was involved in student council and all of these different things. So that and my parents are both teachers, so I have some contacts.

Mark Black: Right? So that was just all logical direction was start there. And I just reached out to local high school and local middle schools and guidance counselors and principals and said, hey. I've got this presentation. Will you have me?

Mark Black: And I did my first, quote, unquote, professional presentation for a hundred dollars in a middle school gym for 200, you know, fifth to eighth graders. And I thought I'd, you know, won the lottery because it proved to me that, oh, maybe people will pay me to listen to me talk. So then I started, you know, book some more schools, and I really did mostly youth stuff for about four or five years. Somewhere along the way there, I came across two key people, really. Montana Tulip, who's a member of the Hall of Fame of CAPS, Tyler Hayden, CSP, who's a longtime member of CAPS and a board member because they were both, you know, in the youth market a little bit as well.

Mark Black: And both of them said, if you wanna do this, there's one place you need to be, and that's CAPS. Mhmm. And after a couple of people told me that, I finally got it through my thick skull. And I signed up and went to my first convention in Montreal, and after that, I was hooked.

Carl Richards: Nice. Nice. And by the way, do you charge more than a hundred bucks, though?

Mark Black: A little bit more. Yeah.

Roxanne Derhodge: Just just a just a wee bit. Just a wee bit. Bit

Mark Black: more. Yeah.

Roxanne Derhodge: It's it's interesting when I listen to your path. Right? And and for a lot of people that speak or train or do different kind of events, you know, a lot of people started pretty much in a lot of similar ways. So when you started to kinda think of, I think this might be a thing that people might pay me for, and I I wanna do it. And how did you kind of start to know what to do?

Roxanne Derhodge: Right? Like, it's you you have an amazing, I mean, life-threatening amazing story. Right? So you're you're coming from just sheer experience of your own path, but then where how do you so for somebody listening that's beginning Yeah. And they're thinking, how do I even decide how to tell, how to not tell, how to not cry, how to not break them?

Roxanne Derhodge: So because mom is gonna be listening.

Mark Black: Yeah. How do you start off

Roxanne Derhodge: with that kind of stuff?

Mark Black: That's a great question, Roxanne. And I think there's a couple of takeaways there. So the blessing and curse that is having a story like mine is that it opens some doors purely by people reading the bio. So people will read the bio and go, oh, I get it. I like, this is a story that people will listen to, and so that's a great blessing. The challenge of it is that if all you do is tell the story, there's only a limited amount of value there.

Mark Black: Right? I mean, there's some value to the kind of inspiration part of it, I guess. But, again, that was fine. For, like, the youth market, that's all they that's all they kinda needed. It's more about if you can entertain, like, students for an hour and give them a couple of ideas, that's that's what they're looking for.

Mark Black: As I got into the corporate world and the association world more for me, I learned that, oh, they want tangible takeaways, things they can use, not just they want some entertainment too. Don't get me wrong. But and that was really through CAPS that I began to learn that, oh, your story will get you here, but it's not gonna get you there. Right? The difference between the Olympians that we have all seen that do really well in the business and the majority of them who don't last is that the ones who don't last have their Olympic story when they tell it, and it's entertaining.

Mark Black: And while they're a recognized memorable name for the year or so after they've maybe been there or won the medal, that works. But then there's a new crop of Olympians. There's the new person on the block, and if they don't have really great content to go with it, then they kind of fade into the background. So I needed to put some meat around the bones, and that's one of the things that I took away from CAPS was how does this apply? How does your story and what you learned apply to people who have not been through what you've been through?

Roxanne Derhodge: So that's the grounding. That's the landing spot where you're like, have a story, but now what? To be able to have a sustainable business, which is kind of where CAPS kind of came into the fray. And I think of my own story where Carl and I had met even before me. Carl and I met back in 2016, 2015, something like that, and I was just beginning to speak. Had spoken corporately and then realized, my goodness. Now what?

Roxanne Derhodge: Where do you go? So that CAPS kind of introduction seems to be a lot of where people start to recognize about what's involved other than the story behind the kind of house of about building a business. Carl, you were gonna say something, and I see that I could see it in your face, and I just wanna give you some time there to jump in.

Carl Richards: Yeah. I was just wondering. That that's a huge shift to go from, like you say, from speaking to students to then speaking to corporate. Was there ever at at any point keeping in mind, the speaking world is extremely competitive. If not Mark Black, they're going to find somebody else.

Carl Richards: So was there at at any point any doubt that this this was going to be too challenging, this wasn't quite a fit, or did you just jump in and say, I'm doing this regardless. I'm gonna figure it out, and I'm in a great community, CAPS, and they're gonna help me do this.

Mark Black: Great. Yeah. No. There were a lot there were lots of hesitation points along the way. So going even from part time to full time.

Mark Black: So when I started, I was doing schools. I was also a substitute teacher, and that was the way that I could have kinda consistent income, but also flexibility so that on the day when I booked a speech, I just booked off the day. I wasn't teaching that day. It also gave me lots of material because I'm talking to students every day. So it was a really good kind of mix.

Mark Black: And after two years of that, I sat down with my wife one day and I said, look. I think we can make this work full time, but we both need to be on the same page here because it's not gonna be lucrative for a while. Are you good with that? And and we were we're blessed that she is a teacher, so she had a stable income, which was really helpful and made it easier to do that do that leap. And then similarly, when I went from youth speaking to corporate speaking, it was less of a, I'm done with that.

Mark Black: I'm starting this. It was more of an organic fade one down, ramp one up. So that again, I'm a big believer in, like, pull the boat really close to the dock before you jump. So there was not a period where we're like, cross my fingers. I hope they like me in the corporate market.

Mark Black: It was sort of, I'm gonna do this new stuff. And while we're doing that, we're gonna start focusing more attention over here. Because those things were starting to come organically anyway. But, again, another CAPS thing, I had a coaching call with Lisa Leitch. She probably won't remember this, but I think I bought it at a CAPS foundation auction.

Mark Black: And she does this business consultation call with me. And I remember the from that call was she says to me, so what you're telling me, Mark, is you're spending most of your marketing and sales efforts marketing to schools because that's what you know and you know how to do that and it works. But you're charging five to seven times the fee for the stuff in the other market, and you're spending almost no time marketing and selling to them. And I went, yep. And she just kinda let me figure out what the problem was with that.

Mark Black: Right? And I went, oh, gotcha. So we need to spend all our time over here, and then whenever youth stuff comes, it comes. And so that's how that should begin to happen, and then organically, the calendar started to go with it.

Roxanne Derhodge: I love the fact that you're, you know, for anybody listening that's thinking about getting in the business or are newer, that path, right, that, you know, I have to stop everything and I have to, you know, I'm gonna speak. That, you know, that transition, especially when you may not have that, maybe you don't have the stability of a second income, to be able to know that there's a way that you can meander a bit at a time. And likewise, my path has been kind of the same, you know, doing it a bit at a time because there's a part of me that says, hey, I'm in this business. I'm gonna go all in, and you think, oh, jeez.

Roxanne Derhodge: I have something called bills. Right. And the reality kind of sets in. So it's really refreshing, and I know a lot of others have done the same as to be able to know it's okay to hold on to something else as you leverage and start building, you know, the market that you do want to be in.

Mark Black: Right. And then it's just a question of how bad do you want it and how many extra hours are you willing to invest. Right? So when I was doing the teaching and speaking, it would look like again, supply teacher is nice because you leave when the students leave. Right?

Mark Black: Like, 20 minutes after all the kids are gone, you're gone. You're not there planning and marking and doing all the things that teachers have to do. So I would get home from a workday at 3 in the afternoon. So, okay, I've got two hours before supper. We eat supper at that point.

Mark Black: We didn't have any kids yet or maybe we had our daughter. So after she's in bed, I've got another, you know, 7 to 9 or 7 to 10 I can plug away on my laptop. So I was working sort of part-time on the business without giving up, again, that consistent income. And I'm working with a speaker right now who's an accountant, and he wants to transition into speaking. And the first thing I said to him is don't quit your job because, a, it gives you the revenue that you can invest into the business, and, b, clients smell desperate.

Mark Black: Right? And so if they, like, you just give off this, like, subconscious air of, like, I need to get this gig or I can't pay my bills, it makes it a really hard place to negotiate from.

Carl Richards: Oh, 100%. I wanted to ask you a question, Mark, about some of the stages that you've spoken on because you've spoken on several, of course. Is there one that stands out as being the most memorable of ones that you've been on?

Mark Black: I know you said most, and I'm gonna be the waffler and pick two. Okay. So one was the it was FFA, Future Farmers of America. I'm trying to remember which state because I've done a bunch of them, but there's one state that I did, Missouri FFA. And it's memorable because there were 9,300 students in this arena.

Mark Black: Wow. And so the energy of that kind of a room is unlike anything I've experienced in any other context. So that was pretty cool just, again, because of the energy. There's also a really cool story if we have time about how I made a really stupid mistake there. But and then the other really memorable one is two years ago, I got a web form submission from the Hawaii State Realtors Association.

Mark Black: And, you know, we all get these spam things on our through our website. Right? So I, you know, I get that. I go, yeah. Right.

Mark Black: Sure. But, you know, there looked like the area code matched up, and the domain name matched, and the email address matched somebody that was on the website. Okay. So we responded, and we set up a phone call, and I was like, oh my gosh. This sounds legit.

Mark Black: And then she said, what would your fee be? And I thought in my head, my again, thanks to caps. Without caps, my response would have been if you will pay for my trip to Hawaii and put me up in this five-star resort where you're hosting the event, you don't need to pay me. Right? Like, that sounds great.

Mark Black: But because of caps, I went, here's my fee. And then tried really hard to shut up and not negotiate down on myself. And she said yes so fast that I went, shoot. I guess I should ask for more money. So long story short, my wife and I got to go to Hawaii for a week and stay at the Sheraton Waikiki Resort and get paid to do it.

Mark Black: So

Carl Richards: Sounds horrible.

Mark Black: Doesn't get better than that. Yeah.

Carl Richards: Sounds absolutely horrible. Okay. You do have to tell that story then. That's good.

Roxanne Derhodge: Oopsie. You can't throw that.

Mark Black: I know.

Roxanne Derhodge: That's what you do on stage just to get so you got us now.

Mark Black: I know. Okay. So I've been working with a different speaker coach, not a cast member. Not that he's a bad guy, but, actually, embarrassing him, he tried to protect me, and I didn't listen. But it was all about especially in the youth market, there's a lot of the then the next add-on for most speakers, like, in the core in our, you know, association corporate world, it's usually you gotta have a book or you gotta have an online program or you gotta have a coaching program.

Mark Black: Mhmm. In the youth world, it's often you gotta have a product, and that product is usually sometimes a book, but often it's like a T-shirt or something the kids want. Right? So I've been working with this guy for a while, and he was talking about that. And then I'd come up with this T-shirt, goofy T-shirt idea that I thought kids would like.

Mark Black: And so I said, I'm telling him about this great event that I've landed, and there's gonna be 9,000 kids there. And, you know, so I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna bring T-shirts. And he said, yep. Great. You know, I'd suggest bringing.

Mark Black: I forget what the number is he gave me, but, like, something like I think he said 100 maybe. And I thought, 100. Like, that's not even 5% of the like, that's crazy. I can well, he's like, well, you don't wanna get stuck with too many, and you never know how it's gonna go. He gave me his reasons.

Mark Black: I was like, okay. Yeah. Yeah. And I promptly ordered 600. And I ordered them college town, so I just find, like, there's five T-shirt manufacturers in every college town because that's part of their world.

Mark Black: So I find the local supplier online, send them the design. They're like, yep. No problem. We can drop ship them to you. We'll have them delivered on the day of your event.

Mark Black: Great. So I arrive at the arena, like, an hour before, meet the T-shirt company, and they drop off six—I'm gonna say 6-by-6-foot cardboard boxes full of shirts. Like, you don't need to really stick with me what this physically looks like. And I'm like, oh, wow. Okay.

Mark Black: Boom. And I had a friend drive an hour who has lived in Missouri, a friend drive about an hour and a half out of town to come and help me run the table afterwards so that we were gonna sell all these shirts. They put I was on last, which actually I thought was perfect, but a couple of problems. Youth events are often like this. They've got organized school buses.

Mark Black: And when the school buses come, the school buses come. And as it turns out, the school buses came fifteen minutes into my speech. Some were leaving as I was speaking because they literally just—it's not a reflection of the speech. It's like, we gotta go and we gotta go. And the rest of them were, like, mad dash as soon as the speech was over.

Mark Black: So I sold something like forty shirts, and then it's an evening event. So it's 9-something at night. I'm sitting on the steps of this, you know, University of Missouri Arena with five giant boxes of shirts and my, like, subcompact car rental car and zero idea how I'm getting them home and my flight's in the morning. And so thank God for my friend who helped me load the rest of them into his car, and we drove into a Kinko's that had a 24-hour, like, FedEx or UPS, like, little office in it. And I spent way too much money to ship them back home.

Mark Black: And then they sat in my basement for about four years before I finally acknowledged the mistake and just threw them away.

Roxanne Derhodge: What what

Mark Black: what what story?

Roxanne Derhodge: Don't do that. Hence why when you get connected to what to your point at the beginning, and then you start to recognize what you need. And a question that I guess logically, I think might make sense is you start off, somebody hears you, you they ask you for a card, you don't know, you find caps, and now what? Right? Like, so I have a story.

Roxanne Derhodge: I can't you know, I wanna get the business built. What how is the speaking world today in keynoting? What what do we need to know about it today compared to when you started 20 years ago? For the people that are new, that are thinking about joining gaps, or the people really just getting their toes wet, but we also have seasoned speak with people that are trying to figure out how to keep their calendars full. What kind of things do do we

Mark Black: I mean, yeah, great question. I think it's so entry stakes are be good. Right? Like and I know that that's blatantly obvious, and yet it's not. First of all, I think we are a poor judge of how good we are.

Mark Black: So I think, you know, hopefully, you we all have enough, you know, self-confidence to be in this business, so we all think we're pretty good. And we probably are. But are you good enough? Well, you need you need some feedback. Right?

Mark Black: And so I'm a big believer in seeking out constructive criticism and then listening to it, actually being able to hear it. And it's painful sometimes, but it's important. And then so that's, you know, that's table stakes. Right? Is are you good?

Mark Black: And then once you are just one second. Oh, okay. Great. Such is life with teenagers.

Carl Richards: Roxanne, do you wanna try do you you wanna try and quickly wrap it up? We'll just not do rapid-fire questions.

Roxanne Derhodge: So so if you could give us some some bullet points

Mark Black: Okay.

Roxanne Derhodge: About what what today you need to what are three or four things you need to keep your eye on if you're going to hit the stage as a keynote speaker. What do you need to do?

Mark Black: Love that. Yep. So, again, table stakes are be good and always be getting better. And then the second is understand that the the job is and I'll speak from a keynoter perspective. It's always, say, a little bit different depending on the business model, but it's still relevant, I think.

Mark Black: Understand that the primary job is being the salesperson and the marketer. Right? The actual delivery of the content is a fraction of what you're gonna spend your time doing if you're gonna be successful. So a lot of folks, they think they're like, I have this great message. I put up this great website.

Mark Black: I've got my brand. I've got everything looks good. I'm just gonna put it there, and the people will come. Right? And the people don't come.

Mark Black: You're gonna get some referrals and things like that, but it's we spend a ton of time just outbound marketing, and you figure out who your market is, helps you to be effective with that time. But I went to a session again, CAPS convention, went to a session with David Avrin, Hall of Fame speaker in the U.S., and he showed us the system that he used, and we implement most of that. And the big takeaway I got from him was we are reaching out to 50 qualified contacts every single week and following up with them and reaching 50 new ones the next week. And we're doing that all the time. Right?

Mark Black: So it's not that you it may well be that that speaker that you look at, they're like, wow. They're so busy. They must be so good. Yeah. They're good.

Mark Black: But understand that they are also working their butt off to just get themselves in front of as many people as they possibly can, and that's the job. Yes. You have to be good. Yes. You have to have content.

Mark Black: But if you're not working the sales and marketing part of this business, then you're always gonna struggle.

Carl Richards: Yeah. Mark, great insights. I'm so glad that you took the time to share with us today, and I think we can all take a page from your stories and what you shared. And you're right. I mean, marketing is a huge piece of it.

Carl Richards: And even if you're not doing it, you know, 50 reach outs a week, you do need to do those reach outs if you want to have a shot at being in this business. So thanks for taking the time today. Roxanne, I'll leave it for you to wrap things up.

Roxanne Derhodge: So for everyone, you know, what we want you to know is that CAPS is the place to hang out. Clearly, I have my story. Carl has his, and Mark, as the incoming president, has shared just a snippet of what the community is like. So if you're interested in learning more about Mark, you know, Mark, the reach out to you is

Mark Black: Black.ca, actually. That's it. Dot com is somebody else.

Roxanne Derhodge: Yeah. We'll put all of that in the show notes. And for CAPS, for anybody

Mark Black: All good.

Roxanne Derhodge: In CAPS, please reach out to any one of us or also just to CAPS. Generally, just put it in your search engine. Come out. Come and visit us at one of our events, and we look forward to it. And for the keynote speakers out there, if you're starting, know that you don't have to go home with 600 T-shirts because there are people who can help you out.

Roxanne Derhodge: And you have a or just

Mark Black: a hundred dollars either. You should charge more than that.

Roxanne Derhodge: You have a story, so we're waiting to hear it. So thank you so much for making this an amazing first episode, and we look forward to hanging out with you again, Carl. Thank you so much. And, again, Mark, thank you. And, Carl, any last words before we sign off?

Carl Richards: I think, yeah, we'll see you in the next episode.

Roxanne Derhodge: Awesome. Take care, everyone. We'll talk to you soon.

Mark Black: Awesome. I hate to just, like, say great and run, but I'm gonna great and run because, apparently, I'm in trouble.

Carl Richards: Yeah. No problem, Mark. Thank you so

Mark Black: much again.

Roxanne Derhodge: Thanks, everybody. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye.

Carl Richards: Take care. We'll see you in a couple of days. Weeks, a week, I guess. Cheers. That went well.

Carl Richards: A quick

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