Instagram Inspiration Episode 9 - Mark Walton

The most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great in whatever they do. That was a quote from Kobe Bryant, the great basketball legend. Good morning, afternoon, evening, people joining from across the world. I am so delighted and happy and honored to have with me Mark Walton, my mentor, my guru. He has helped me so many times, and I'm so delighted to have you Welcome, Mark, in my Instagram Inspiration Show, episode number 9.

I am surprised to say that, or to hear you say that I am your mentor, Haritosh Srivastav, because I've got to tell you, and I'll tell all your friends who are watching, that I've considered you one of my mentors. I've learned as much or more from you than I have from any of the Toastmasters that I know, and believe me, I know a lot of Toastmasters. So I'm really glad to have made your acquaintance, and if I've made your life any better or any different, that tickles me to death.

Oh, thank you so much. You are just so humble. I can't beat you on that. Okay, uh, so I'm, uh, I'll tell a bit about the format. So this is gonna be more about longer table topics, to say. I'll be asking few questions to you, and in between, if audience who is joining us online have any question, they can put it on the comment section, and we'll see if we get time, we'll tackle a few questions towards the end. So this is it. I'm really looking forward to your nuggets. Let me start by asking you to summarize your life journey, the major milestones of your life, in a few minutes.

Summarizing my life very quickly, I'll start off by saying I'm not dead yet. Now some people might think that's not much of a life summary, but it pretty much does mine. But if you don't know me, I'll fill you in on some of the biographical details. I'm 70 years old and will remain 70 for 3 more days. Then I'll be 71. I was born in the central part of the United States in a state called Ohio. Haritosh Srivastav, you lived in Indiana. Ohio is very similar to Indiana. It's the Midwest. I've been married for many years. I've got my wife perfected now, and I don't intend to change her. She and I are a pair. We have two excellent sons. One is an attorney here in town, and the other is a software engineer in Denver. I have four grandkids, and my favorite of the four is the one that I have seen the most recently. Always, they're all excellent grandkids. That's my family. As far as employment goes, I spent several years working at different jobs at which I was not particularly successful, and then I went into business for myself, and in a small way I was fairly successful at that. And when I retired, I found an excellent hobby in Toastmasters, and that is what is filling my days these days. That's what I would say about myself if asked.

Okay, thank you. I Yeah, you're cutting down so many parts, but I think I'll forgive you for that. But jokes apart, so some of the things that we do in this Instagram Inspiration is to extract out some of the failures, some of the things that we have undergone through in life, and find out if there is something that— a lesson or something that we can pass on to the next generation. So would you like to talk about your failures and how did you overcome?

Yeah, that's actually a really good question. I'm glad you've asked it. And I'm so unfamiliar with Instagram, but I'm seeing that Laura Anderson asked what my business was. Yeah, I'll, I'll deal with these things sequentially, but starting off with failures. When I was young, I was, I guess, technically well-educated. I had a master's degree, but I had no particular skill. It was a liberal arts degree, and if anybody would like a liberal arts degree, I've got a couple of them that are doing nothing right now. They've done me no good. They did not prepare me for employment very well. And to be honest, I did not apply myself the way I should have to my earlier positions. So I bounced from job to job. I probably had 3 jobs in 10 or 12 years, and I wasn't much good at any of them. Now that's looking back. I don't think I was successful, but I finally found a job that I liked, and that was selling children's books. I had kids at the time. I liked books. I have always. I was very good at selling children's books to school librarians, basically. I knew the catalog backwards and forwards. I was comfortable with the literature, comfortable with the people. I liked them, they liked me. I did pretty well with that until the time that we had a massive budget cut in Indiana, in the state that I live now, in our educational system. And we have those periodically, and schools fired all the librarians. All of my contacts were gone. All the people who bought books from me were gone. The schools were not buying books, and I wasn't selling any books, so I, I lost that job. And then I tried to pick up different lines of books, selling them as an independent as opposed to an employee, and I realized I was chasing the wrong car because there was nothing there. There was no money to chase. At that point in time, I was pretty much a complete failure. I had a family, I had a miserably inadequate income, what I considered to be no job skills, and an education which was not serving me very well. So what were my assets? I had one thing going for me that I hope everybody who's listening does not have. I hope you don't ever get it. You wouldn't want it, but if you need it, it's probably there. That asset was desperation. I have found in my life that when you absolutely, totally must do something no matter what, Sometimes you can do it, and what I had to do was find a living for my family because I had failed at the other things that I had tried. What, what I did was silly in this day and age, but I actually bought newspapers every day and looked at the help wanted ads. I think that's a little old-fashioned these days, but that's what I did. And finally, I found a little quarter-inch tall help wanted ad that said, "Make big commissions buying books." And I thought to myself, well, that's silly. You make commissions selling books, not buying them. These people don't even know what they're talking about. But I answered the, answered the ad anyway because it was books and I like books, and found out that there was another business out there that was not too far from what I was doing. And not to bore you, but I bought old textbooks from schools in wholesale quantities and then I actually wholesaled them. Later on, I got into the retail of them, but that was my business. I bought old books from schools, and it was a very good business for us, but it started with desperation. And I hope that people listening would rely instead on education, hard work, and intelligence. Those are probably better assets to have in your quiver than desperation. How's that for an answer? Is that what you're looking for?

Wow, thank you so much. That is such an inspiring story. I wouldn't say it's a story, it's, it's your life story, and, and I'm so thrilled to know this. Thank you so much for sharing this. I knew a part of it but not the whole portion. So thank you for the whole audience. Uh, I do know that, uh, you also had some, uh, heart disease and something to do with the fitness. Would you like to share things about that?

Oh yeah, I, I, I— you'll be sorry that you asked this. I just better warn everybody, you're going to be really sorry because I am evangelical about this and I like to talk about it. And I found out that everybody loves talking about their own fitness journey, and boy, is it tedious listening to other people. So I would advise everybody listening right now, this would be a good time to turn the Instagram off because I'm gonna do boring stuff. Trust me. So here goes. Get a pillow, get ready. I spent most of my life overweight, pretty badly overweight. I was 50 pounds overweight 10 years ago, and it was all belly. And of course, I convinced myself I was not overweight. I just thought that was normal for me, but my belly was there. It was inescapable. And a little bit over 10 years ago, in fact, 10 years ago in December, I had open heart surgery because I had some blockages. And I was rather fortunate to have that surgery because otherwise I would not be here, of course. And after the surgery, I decided I would be more fit and eat better. And not do such awful— have such awful diet habits as I've had in the past. But I didn't know what to do, so for a couple of years I just slowly gained my weight back. You lose weight when you have a big open— a big surgery, and open heart surgery is a big surgery.

Right.

The one thing I did religiously is I did cardiac rehab at a hospital facility. I enjoyed it because it was good structured exercise, and there's a good society of us old codgers who've had surgery there. As it happens, the fellow on the treadmill next to me, retired physician, was going to a trainer, a physical trainer, and my older son who lives here in Indianapolis went to the same trainer. The fellow is really a charismatic trainer. He's, he's what you really want. But the two of them, my son and my doctor friend, retired doctor friend, for Christmas bought me an introductory few sessions with the trainer.

Okay.

Went to see him, and the trainer did exactly what I had hoped he would do, and in a way that I would not have known to ask. Because this fella, his name is Joe Moberecki, if any of you are here in Indianapolis. He knows everything about physical fitness, from how to build muscles to the blood chemistry, to how to pose in one of those little tiny bikinis that the muscle builders wear. I do not, by the way, but he does. He is an expert in information. He knows all that. But more important, he is charismatic. He tells you what to do and how to do it, and you want to do it for him. I did. I lost my 50 pounds about 8 years ago, and it's gone. I'm not in a good place to show you my mighty muscles, but I am, I am fairly lean now and fairly, pretty good muscle tone. My wife joined him too, and she has done even better than I. Got my neighbor down the street, and he has had a comparable experience. And I've got to tell you, right now I can pick up a 45-pound plate. Those of you who do weights know what a plate is. It's a big weight, and it's heavy. That's what I was carrying around with me all the time, and believe me, I am never ever going back there again. I am going to stay away from that extra weight. I've done it for 8 years. It's my lifestyle now, and I love every second of it because being fat is not as much fun as being fit. Wasn't that tedious? I thought so.

No, I would say that that's so inspiring. I think I need to go back to gym once this corona is over. I'm gonna hit back the gym here. I've got fat, lot of fat now, and I need to work on that. But yeah, I think this is an inspiring and touching story, so thank you. How did you come to know about Toastmasters?

Oh, well, that's a— to my mind, that's an interesting story. I mentioned to you I did cardiac rehab at the hospital. The old guy on my right was my doctor friend. The old guy on my left was this World War II veteran, old soldier, tremendous guy, easy to talk to, a lot of fun. Haritosh, you know him.

I know.

Maybe some of the others do. It was a gentleman named Warren Sherman. Warren Sherman, yep. I have a lot of historical figures that I like to read about, but I don't have many heroes. Warren Sherman is one of my heroes. He is to this day 94 years old. I speak to him fairly frequently. And he was a Toastmaster. So there we are on the treadmills bouncing back and forth, and he said he'd heard a speech last night about something that interested me. I forget what it was. I said, well, where did you happen to hear a speech? Why, he said, I heard it in Toastmasters. You'd like Toastmasters. Why don't you come see us? And I did for a couple of simple reasons. I like Warren. He's a delightful individual, and everybody that knows him thinks the same thing. And I'm retired. What else have I got to do? I went to the Toastmasters Club, and the first meeting at which I attended, I was asked to do an impromptu., and I, as anybody who knows me knows, I love to do impromptus, so I did. And then I was evaluated by a delightful Toastmaster who's not with our club anymore, Noreen Halligan, very, very capable woman, and I realized, wow, I've got a lot to learn here, and this is really fun. I've been hooked. I've been a Toastmaster ever since. So that's how I got to Toastmasters. It was because of that treadmill and because of my friend Warren Sherman.

Wow, I know Warren Sherman. Every time he used to come in Pioneer 17, he used to do any role, whether it's a speech, it's a Toastmaster. It's a— my favorite one, when he used to bring the different poems and What a collection of poems he has. I'm impressed, and he's such an icon and such a role model for all of us.

You know, his selection of poetry comes from a standard poetry textbook, which is exactly the same one that I used when I was in university. It's kind of fun. It's a good collection of poems.

I bet it won't be same as mine. Back in India. All right, uh, so now let's move on to some more tips. So as part of this series, I asked my guests to give some for young professionals who are going to start their career or who are at the entry level, that what are some of the 2 or 3 things they can do which can help in their career building, which can help them in their life? So what kind of tips you want to give to them?

Well, I would speak from the perspective of somebody who did not use his education well. I am well-educated in useless information. I would suggest very simply pursue a professional degree that will give you employment. What we used to call almost jokingly, get a degree with a rice bowl attached to it. The idea that you eat out of a rice bowl— I do these days, by the way, I eat mostly rice. But I studied history, which is utterly useless. And if I had that to do over again, I would not. So I hope the people who are listening are pursuing professional degrees. And if I had to name a few of the most obvious, I would say engineering, law, and medicine. Those are, those are the things that seem to be very gainful and very productive and very useful in the modern world. Not coincidentally, one of my sons is an attorney and one is a software engineer. I have no history majors in my family other than me. Thank you.

Thank you. That's very crisp and clear. And before I go on to my last question, audience, if you have any questions, please type in, in the comment section. We had one question which I think Mark already answered about his business. So we all know the, the cloud that we have right now, the COVID-19, corona, the world epidemic. And I know different people are dealing with in different ways. So how are you dealing with the COVID-19?

Well, I suppose the way most of us are. My wife and I are of an age that we are in the high-risk category. We do not go out, period, except to the grocery store maybe once a week. That and— don't tell anybody— but we still go to see our trainer. We can do one-on-one sessions in the gym. We're the only two people in the gym when we go, the trainer Yeah, the trainer and me, or the trainer and my wife. So we've done that, but the other thing that we do, or I do, I do a lot of Toastmaster meetings right now, and I'm having a ball doing them. The nice thing is the online meetings let us escape from the geographical prisons in which we all have limitations. In other words, you're in England, you have friends in India. I've been with you and with some of your friends, right, half a world away. I've been with other friends in China. We are getting in our club members who are in different states, several hundred have been broken, and we can now have a lot more contacts than we had in the past. This, to me, has been a very positive aspect of the lockdown, and I gotta tell you, I'm really enjoying that part.

Yeah, I think the same was true for me. I've been meeting so, so many people in Toastmasters around the world. Places where I could have never imagined to go. And I think, yeah, so in a way, that's a real positive with Corona. So yeah, I really— thank you so much, Mark. This was such a delight to have you in the show. We are towards the end, and I do not see any more questions, so I'll, I'll conclude the session like I do every time, that, no, Let's all help each other in these difficult times. And when I say help, it's not always about money. It's also about talking to someone for 5 minutes, feeding a pet, or doing something good for someone. It has been an honor and pleasure to have you, uh, Mark. And you are my mentor, whether you accept or not. I've learned so much from you. I have, uh, I've been so naughty and you helped me be straight. So thank you so much. And, uh, I'm gonna end the episode.

Yes, wait a second. You didn't give me a chance to tell, tell everybody what I learned from you. Maybe, maybe that'll be another time. But trust me, everybody who's listening, if you need a somebody who will be a role model in your, at least Toastmaster career, you're looking at him, and it ain't me right now, folks, it's Haritosh Srivastav.

Thank you so much, Mark. Thank you. All right, so I'm gonna end the episode by saying that, no, let's keep learning, keep growing, and keep going out of our comfort zone. This is Haritosh Srivastav. Thank you so much for joining for episode 9, Instagram Inspiration with Mark Walton. I'll be back next week with another person who has inspired me in my life. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Mark.

Thank you, Haritosh Srivastav. Take care.