Episode 33: Marc Lee Shannon on How Resilience and Systems Transform a Creative Career

When you say to me, what are the things that I learned that transferred into the business world is. Timing is everything. You have to have the sense when things are shifting. Right?

Recovery, renewal, regeneration, those are all words when I think of my wonderful friend, Mark Lee Shannon. Mark, I'm so excited for you to come and talk to us on the podcast today. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. I'm nervous. No, I am. Because you're such an important person to me.

Well, you are equally as important to me. So I want to talk a little bit. Your career has been a fascinating blend of roles. You've been a musician, you've been the VP of sales at a major music industry company. So I want you to kind of tell me, you know, your 25 year tenure as a guitarist with Michael Stanley, all the things that you've done, you know, how did your experiences in the corporate world, your experiences personally, how did they influence your approach to your music, your creative career? Would you just share your story a little bit? Because it's so beautiful.

People ask me, how did you get where you are? It's because I turned off on a lot of dirt roads. I don't think anybody really ends up, especially in the arts, ends up where they thought they would end up. I always loved music. I grew up. Sports and music were my thing. And I was good enough to make teams, but I was the guy at the end of the bench. But I could really work hard enough to make a team. But I knew early on in high school that there was something about music that was different. And I was lucky enough to have that teacher that saw in me that something I didn't see in myself, I didn't have that confidence growing up. And she entered one of my songs into a scholastic writing awards contest for original song. And I didn't think anything about it. I just, you know, she said, no, you really should do this. And at the end of the school year, she said to me, started asking me a bunch of questions about the song. I said, what? She goes, I need you to end up coming to the awards tonight. And I thought, well, this is strange. I didn't even invite anybody. And I ended up getting a national award for that. And so I knew that I could do it, and she showed me that I could do it. So music was always going to be my thing. And I ended up going to Los Angeles, getting into a music school that accepted 120 kids worldwide. And it was a guitar program, brand new. And if you've ever seen the film or the wrecking Crew, which is on Netflix. You'll see that those were my teachers. And it was. I had to. Men, skill wise, talent wise. 119 out of 120. But I lived in a little apartment across from Hollywood High School. I didn't have a lot of training, but I did have one thing going for me. Because of the way I'd grown up in my family. I had that resilience, that grit of not being able to give up. I could fall down, get back up. I don't think I was smarter, more talented than anybody else. I had one thing going for me. I wasn't smart enough to know how to quit. Right.

That's wonderful.

Just kept going. And I think that a lot of the teachers at that school saw that I could do that, and they gave me opportunities because of that. Some of the teachers helped me get started in the session world there. And I just kept failing a lot. And I would learn from my failures, and they would say, kid, don't do this, kid, try this. And so in the 80s, I was one of that studio musician kid that just kind of kept hanging out, and I did pretty well out there. I didn't actually have another job for all of the 1980s, except being a freelance musician, which was pretty incredible. I was pretty skinny, but it was a lot of fun. But then I realized that around the time I was 29, 30, that, you know, it was. I was timing out. And I think that's an important thing that all of us have to do when we're in the business world. When you say to me, what are the things that I learned that transferred into the business world is timing is everything. You have to have the sense when things are shifting. Right? And you have to be able to say to yourself, I see this, and not be fooled by, you know, that. That. That ego part that says, no, I. I'm gonna. One more time, and. And listening maybe to the people around you that say, oh, no, you're. You're that guy. You have to be able to trust that intuition to say, nope, things are shifting, and I can see it, and I need to move. I need to get moving. I think a lot of us do. What is it? I read once in a Harvard Business Review article that most companies that are failing know it, but they fail to be able to make the changes. They know it. Most board of directors, most office C suites, know when things are going wrong, but for. They can't change it. They can't do what they need to do. They know it's happening, but they can't change it. I think that's an important skill that I learned in the music business. I could see the changes happening. I needed to get out of LA and I needed to come back here. I had a little. I was married at the time and I had a little baby. So I came back home to Ohio and I got a job at a music store. And that was miserable because I was just this guy that had said he had done all these things right.

Yeah.

And little did I know that that was exactly the thing I needed to have happen to me. Because from that job at the music store I worked and worked and worked. You know, I was doing one nighters in a band. I was working 60 hours a week running a music store and hating it. I just hated it. But that was my training to be able to get the skills, to learn what I needed to know to get the job at Audio Technica.

Wow.

Because when they were looking for somebody who was had some basic management skills, they also needed somebody that understood the industry and they were looking for somebody with retail skills. So I started at Audio Technica in a position that was called regional sales manager. Okay. And I was the guy that went out to the music stores and talked about products. So I was perfectly suited for that. I had the skills, I had the lingo, I knew how to talk to people in the stores. But I also had a little bit of the entry business ground because I worked management. I knew how to talk to the managers of the store. I also had the other skill of being able to learn how to work hard. Isn't it work ethic? That's the one thing you can't teach. Isn't that what you find with all of your employees when you size them up? You see pretty quickly within the first. How long does it take you? Couple weeks maybe?

It's usually first three weeks. You see work ethic, see, are they.

Going to do it? Because everybody comes in the front door looking really great. Don't they all? They're so good. I love them. And you watch their work patterns, you know what I mean? And everybody, you know, looks nice in a nice suit. But then after a while you start seeing, after a few weeks, maybe even it takes a couple months, can they really deliver? Are they on their deliverables and how do they deliver the work? Right. That's when you start seeing the work ethic, you know. And so, you know, I could do it, I could do it. I wasn't as skilled as everybody else, wasn't as smart as everybody else. I didn't have a great haircut, obviously, you know, but I could work hard. I could work hard and I could keep learning and I could fall down and fail over and over again. I was really great at failing. But, you know, I consider those things really, not mistakes. I considered them lessons, and I think went into that. So in my corporate career, you know, basically one after another just hung in there. Hung in there, hung in there. Right. And resilience. Resilience was just, you know, and then I went from being regional sales manager to national sales manager, then director of sales, then director of sales from North America, then basically director of sales for North America and South America for one, for professional products. And then I became vice president of sales and then basically vice president of sales for Western hemisphere for all brands. And I think at one point in time, I had 350 downstream indirect. Indirect reports.

Wow.

Right. And around that time, I did a pretty good drinking habit too. Okay. So the way I coped with the amount of traveling, I think at one point I was that guy on the road. I think it was several days a week, several weeks a month for 24 years is what I did. So the way I coped with the stress of being gone all the time, by the way, on the weekends, I was a rock star with Michael Stanley. So the way I was coping with it was at the end of the day, just started having a drink, and then one drink turned into a couple, and I had the genesis. You know, unfortunately, I had the predisposition, you know, like some of us do. You know, I'm a type 2 diabetic also. You know what I mean? I didn't. Didn't ask for that.

No.

You know, my dad was a type 2 diabetic. My grandfather was an alcoholic. Guess who inherited both. Right? So I got both. And thankfully, 11 years ago, I got sober. So it was. It was, you know, the way I coped with it. Not unusual. We see that, I think, a lot.

Yeah.

But I was also one of those guys where you would never have guessed that was my coping mechanism. And I was a really good top performer. So if it did show, you probably wouldn't have minded much because I was delivering the numbers. Yeah, right. So you kind of messed up a little bit at that trade show. Don't worry about it. The customers like him, you know, so those things, I think were also contributing to the fact that, you know, as long as you're delivering numbers and, you know, making the board meeting work well and showing up well in that nice suit and delivering the speeches, I think There's a lot of things that people will overlook. But, but after that was all done, I came back to what I really loved, which was music again, you know.

So let's talk a little bit about some of that transition because, you know, you, you transitioned from being part of a well known band, focusing more on your solo career, focusing on recovery. You've got a project like your podcast, Recovery Talk. So what has been, as you've walked through your life and you've done so many things, what has been the biggest leadership lesson you've learned in shifting from being collaborator to the front man to the leader of your own brand? What, what have you learned as you've had some of those lessons?

You don't do it alone, Boo. Do you? You just don't do it alone. No. Right. You know, you have got to get the people around you that are in your tribe. And I think you have a sense, an innate sense when you're working with tribe members, don't you? Yeah, you just, you can walk in a room and you can look around and go, that's one right there. And I don't know if it's a, a spiritual thing, I don't know if it's a, some sort of different level of connection you have, but you just know right away this is somebody that I can walk with, this is somebody I can work with. And it's different for different people, I think, but I, I just get a sense that they're, you're, you're walking the same path with people and it's their. I, you know, I, I, I follow a guy named Scott Galloway and he's, he's a really good podcaster. And he said something the other day, he said, you know, you', you know, business advice for people that are young entrepreneurs. And he said, anybody that says follow your passion is probably a rich guy that's already made his money, right?

Yes, I've heard that quote.

You know, you have to follow your talent. Right. And I think that you, you look for, for people that have that energy, you know, that, that when you're working. I'm working with a young musician now. His name is Michael Weber. When we get in a room together, it's just elevated. We're just going, the whole energy of the room comes up. I think that's what you look for is it's not really work. You're gliding, you're in the boat with somebody and all of a sudden the room just comes alive and you're working. You feel it, you feel there's an energy. You're not pulling what I call. You're not pulling a little red wagon around, like, come on, you know, or trying to explain something. 3 or 4. There's an energy in the room. When you're with your tribe members, that's a different thing. You're not pulling them around.

No. Well, you've done a lot of different things and especially right now, you've launched a substack, you've got your podcast, you've released multiple albums, you're helping other artists. You have an amazing way in how you connect with people. But I want to know, as someone who's creative, how do you manage that business side of being an artist? I know you've got a lot of experience in sales and the things that you've done with Audio Technica, but really, how do you do the business part and still protect the time and the energy that you need to do creative work? Especially for those small business owners that are listening, that are content creation is something that they're responsible for too.

Well, I have a system.

Tell me about this system.

I call it my five W's of my life. So back in the 90s and the 2000s, I was a big Stephen Covey guy and that was a really, really popular method of organization. Remember the Franklin Covey planners we all had? I just came across some of. I can't believe I still have them.

Are you looking at them like no.

I think what was important about it was it was the first time I really had a system of putting it all together and making sense of life management programming. Right. And really I think what it was is organize your life by roles, roles and goals. So roles and goals still stuck with me. So that whole thing really permeated my approach to my life. So somehow it became this kind of like weird hybrid approach to it. But I call it my five W's. Are you ready for this?

I would love them.

So my five W's and I wrote them down so I could bring them along with you today. My first 5W, my first of the W of the 5W is wellness as a person, long term recovery. I know that I have got to take care of me first because if I don't take care of me. Were we just talking about this before the pod? How you doing? How you doing? Right.

I'm managing.

So my first is number one, I have got to take care of me. I'm a type 2 diabetic. I'm a person in long term recovery. But I know that if I don't take Care of me. Nothing in my universe works if I don't take care of me. My family's not working, my, my business contexts aren't working, my wife. Everything in my whole world doesn't work unless I'm taking care of this engine here. Okay? So for me, that's like walking, working out, you know what I mean? I've gotta watch what I put into my body, right? You know, and you know, resting, sleep. So every week I make sure that I'm, you know, what am I doing this week? I set some, some goals for that and I try to make something, something different, something interesting. Okay? So this week it was going to be walking in the Cuyahog Valley national park. Well, it's 20 degrees out there. Guess what Mark me make. I'm probably not going to get out there that much, but I was out there twice so far this week. Okay. It was freezing. I would say, what am I doing? What am I doing out there? Right? Okay, the next one is warm heartedness. That's number two. Who am I going to love? Who am I taking care of? Who's important to me in my life? Because why am I doing all this in my whole world? What am I working for? Right? You know, none of us are ever going to get to the end of the line and go, man, I really wish I would have taken that meeting. We're in dental line, laying in a bed, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

And, oh, I wish I would have, you know, taken that. Wish I would have bought that company. None of us will ever say. What we will say is that we wish we would have spent more time with the people we loved. I wish you would have maybe spent more time with my dad before he passed. I wish I would have said this. All of us will be thinking about the people we love. This is the most important thing. So who can I touch this week? So for me, you know, my kids, I need some extra special time with my kids this week. You know, each of them are going through their own little thing right now. And I got to tune into that, you know, and make sure that I'm being Papa Shan, you know, my wife and I, you know what I mean, we got some communication things we need to be talking about right now. Who else doesn't have that in marriage right now, Right? Okay. And you know, there's a couple friends. I made a, I made a point this week with the holidays. Talk to somebody this week, even if it's just a text, just reach out and go, I'm thinking about you dude, what's happening? How are you doing with that thing? Right. The next one is, of course, this is the big one. W's working. What am I doing to make any money? Okay. All these things I'm doing. And that's a big list this week because I got a lot of gigs. I'm doing this, I'm doing this. I got this, I got all those things. What am I doing? How am I doing it? What am I. How am I going to get there? Where am I getting it? Okay, next one is if my W is wonder I'm learning. How am I getting to the point? What am I listening to? What are my pods, you know, I mean, you know, because I try to combine things. I drive from walking. What am I learning when I'm walking? You know what I mean? Yeah. Am I listening? Same positive much? Because sometimes when I list the same things, like, okay, I'm. I'm relearning this over and over again. I take go away from this. What kind of books can I listen to? What else can I do if I'm listening to. Same. The same thing, same guy. Too much? No, no. I'm bored with this. So this one, you know. Oh, I've got a webinar this week. Funny thing, I'm going to be learning something later today from a friend of mine is doing a webinar. Yeah, you know, I've got a book that. It's about relationships that I need to be working on. Because you know what? As a husband, I could do some more work. I got some stuff to need I need to be working on. Because you know what? I'm a perfectly flawed person. I can do better in some areas. Okay, so some reading also. And the last W is world and community. What am I doing to make my world better? Right.

Yeah.

You and I serve on a board together, right? So we need to be. What are we doing? Is that work meaningful? Am I in or am I just kind of riding along? Am I in that boat? Am I paddling or am I just kind of riding along? Okay. I didn't really have a big report this week and that border just showed up with a nice sweater. Did I really pay attention? Was I in? Did I do the work right? So those are my thoughts. So these are all really pretty. But here's the most important part. Did I put them in my schedule this week? Was there a place where I said, Tuesday at 2 o'? Clock, I'm doing that. So that's what I do. My first method is what am I doing? What's important to me in my roles of each of these now, did I schedule them? Did I put them in there? Okay. So once I've done that, that's what's important. The other thing that I do try. I try to do is I try to set up, and this is important to me is what is my code? How am I working with my code in my life? Okay.

Yeah.

So my daily code. My daily code is something I try to do every. And it's changed a little bit. But mostly it's pretty much the same. Same. So my first thing I try to do is I try to control and work on my emotions. I try to be living with a little bit of equanimity. Right. Try to stay at a place. So for me, it's stoicism. I can get a little emotional. As a creative person, I can be. Right. Yeah. So I try to be mindful of my emotions. I grew up in a family that was. There was a lot of emotional weaponizing. Okay. So I try to use. When I'm looking at my emotions, you know, I try to notice what I'm doing. I try to name it and I try to reframe it. Okay. I try to love myself. Going back to self care. My other thing is kindness. Kindness matters every day to everybody. It's free. Yeah, it's free. You can do it. Okay. And the other one, which I've been really trying to focus on this year a lot, is not judging people. You never know what somebody's got in their back pocket. It's really super easy for me to be all judgy. Right. You know, why are you doing that? What's up with that? Why are you doing that? I get to do this. I have to do that. Really? Really, Mr. Judgy Boy?

Really good self talk there. Yes.

Okay. Another thing is be generous in all things. Give it away. Just give it away. And that comes from my recovery. Yes. And you know, I have really been very, very fortunate in my life. You know, I have everything I need, everything I need. And I've done that because I've worked really, really hard in my life. So as far as material things, I have everything I need. You know, I'm not a billionaire, but who needs that much money? I mean, really, do you really need that much money? How much is enough? That's a question. The concept of enough.

That's a good question.

What is enough? What is enough really for me? Right? Yeah. Yeah. How many sweaters do you need, really? How many pairs of really cool shoes do you need? How many guitars? Now, wait a minute. We. Not. We got to talk about guitars.

Okay, we'll take that one off.

But. So I think that when you talk about. When you. When you really talk about, you know, giving advice, you talk about your business. I think that the. The most important thing is, what is your system? What is your code? What is your discipline? And then once you have that in place, can you be resilient with it? You know, when all things are blown, when all the storm comes at you and everybody's blowing at you from every side, can you stay centered? And what you know your code is, if you don't have to start with, then you got problems.

You can't row.

You can't row.

I love it. I want to. Two more questions as we're kind of wrapping up. I want to talk about the world part the things you know. You're a certified peer recovery supporter for the Ohio Department of Behavioral Health. You host the Sober Chronicles. You are very open about your recovery journey. I am always honored to be able to share space with you when you are talking about these things, and especially in how you have such amazing rapport with individuals who are really working on trying to take those first steps into recovery. I want to know how your journey in recovery has influenced you. Not just your art and music, but also your personal definition of success and leadership. Because to recover is to lead oneself. So would you share that?

So one of the things I always remind myself when I'm working at detox or baby health wardrobe is that was me. I was sick, and I always thought that I was a person that was just a bad person. You see, because my mindset was. Because I couldn't fix me. I, Me, my. I always thought, this is my problem. Leave it up to me. I got this right because I didn't understand fundamentally that what I struggled with was a medical and a mental health issue. I just thought I was a bad person because I couldn't fix myself. And I was hearing around me the stigma of what's wrong with you. Yeah, why can't you just drink normally? Dude, just quit it. What's wrong? And you know, I would have family members who say, what's wrong with you? Why can't you stop this? Don't you see what you're doing to yourself? Don't you see what you're doing to your job? Don't you see what you're doing? And this is what everybody. I'm not special, Chrissy. I'm not special at all. This is what everyone deals with when they struggle with substance use disorder or mental health issues. And that's why it's so important for, for us, the work that we do is so important for us to be able to get that message out about the stigma of substance use disorder and mental health issue. Most people think they're just not good people. They think, why can't I be like everyone else? What's wrong with me? And my big paradigm shift was the moment that I worked with a really a grand old dam, and her name was Patty. And she said to me, Mr. Shannon, you're not a bad person. You're a person needs treatment. Paradigm shift. All of a sudden, the light went on in my room and I said, oh, I can get well. And I remember that moment very clearly. And so if I can share that with other people, and when I go into detox wars where I work with people or I share my story, I know that by just me telling people, that's what I find out. There might be people out there that'll see themselves in me, and then we can help people. So why wouldn't I want to do that? Right? Why wouldn't want to do that? And, and for me, it's a no, it's a no brainer. I can remember when I started writing the, the in Sober chronicles, in the Devil strip. I had a really good friend of mine who is a very successful business I went to grade school with, I went to high school with. He said, dude, do you know what you're doing? You're really putting it out there. You sure you want to do this? And I thought for a minute I didn't understand what he meant. Why wouldn't I want to do that? You know? And I could see how he would think that because the community we grew up with, I mean, we went to Catholic grade schools together, we went to college prep high schools together. And I could see after a while what he was thinking about. But I. It just didn't dawn on me that I wouldn't want to share that with somebody because I realized such a big, big awareness of I wasn't, wasn't a bad person. Yeah, I was just a sick guy and I needed to get help. Treatment would make the difference. Why wouldn't you want to share that with people? I'm not special at all. All I'm doing is just telling people, hey, look, guess what? What? You can get better. You can do it. Just give it a go, you know, it doesn't always work. And some of the times, I mean, I will tell you that I Had a really difficult time this summer because Mr. Fancy Pants was sitting in front of a lady that was struggling with a very, very difficult, difficult diagnosis. And I was being. Listen to me. And she was looking at me like I was a crazy person because I was. She was very, very ill. And I was trying to convince her she had a pathway forward. And she was looking at me like, yeah, okay. And I realized, guess what? I'm not Jesus Christ. I can't help people. You know what I mean? All I can do is be a living example of what it can be. And that's what a peer supporter do. We use our live example of being able to say, look at me. Here's what you could do. Try this. And. And by the way, we can be there to lift a hand out to you if you want to, and we can help you get on the way. I'm not a physician. I'm not a clinician. I'm not a therapist. I'm not a counselor. I'm just a dude that says, I did it. Let me show you what I did. I can't tell you what you do. I don't know your life. I can't tell you what to do, but let me show you what I did, and that's what I can do. So if I can do that and help a couple people, then I'll feel like maybe my journey will be worthwhile. I always used to say that. You remember those great big pink erasers we got in grade school? So I always feel like maybe if I can help somebody, it'll help me erase a little bit of the stigma that I felt for all those years that held me back. Because if I could go back in a time travel Uber, I would tell myself. I would tell myself, listen, you're not a bad person. You just need to get help and you'll be all right. Because I just didn't believe it. I thought it was just a bad guy. So, yep, that's what I would do.

Thank you. So, last question mark. You know our. We ask it to every business leader who's here. What is the thing that you would tell our listeners that they can do to get 1% in their business or in their leadership every day?

That's a really tough one to encapsulate. But I would say, make sure you got the right people in your boat. No doubt about it. And it's okay to pull over to the side of the river and let some people out. Let them out. Because if you don't have the right people in the boat, you can't get to where you need to go. Stick with your systems. Make sure you're always ready to say to yourself, guess what? The smartest people I know are the people who can say, easily, man, I was wrong. Yeah, I need to.

Oh, that's good.

I totally blew it. I was so wrong. Let's fix it. Let's do it wrong. And they have no problem. I've worked with some really incredibly talented people who have no problem going, dude, I so messed that up. Let's fix it. Those are the smart ones, aren't they?

Yes.

The ones that go, oh, dude, I totally blew it. Let's fix it. Right? That, to me, is super, super great business intelligence.

Well, Mark, thank you for your time today. I feel we've gone on such a. A wide journey and talking about the things that you've accomplished, about your artistic career, you know, talking about your. Your recovery, how to lead an authentic Life with your 5W. So thank you for just. For being here, sharing your time, and just sharing space with us.

Thank you for doing this and. And being able to offer people. People. A window into how people do it. Well, that's important.

Thank you.