Mark Walmsley

🌟 Exciting New Episode Alert! 🎧Dive deep into the hidden depths of human experiences with our latest podcast episode featuring the inspiring Mark Walmsley. 🌊

Join us as Mark shares his incredible journey through the COVID-19 pandemic, shedding light on its profound impact on the arts sector. With a diverse background in music, branding, and marketing, Mark’s story is a testament to resilience and creativity.

Highlights from the episode include:

🎵 Passion for the Arts: Discover how Mark’s early love for music evolved into a digital focus, leading him to found the Arts and Culture Network group on LinkedIn. This platform became a beacon of hope and connection for many during the pandemic.

💡 Democratic Collective Philanthropy: Learn about Mark’s innovative approach to philanthropy, which has united 152,000 members to support global charities aligned with sustainable development goals.

🤝 Community and Connectivity: Mark emphasizes the importance of arts for mental and physical health and shares his vision for better funding and recognition in the sector. His successful fundraising campaign raised over $100,000, supporting communities like orphan dancers in Kampala.

🎭 Personal Reflections: From personal challenges, like his father’s passing, to joyful family moments, Mark opens up about his life, his blended family with his wife Jo, and his daughter’s musical journey.

🎶 The Power of Music and Theater: Discover how music provided solace during tough times and Mark’s excitement about introducing his grandchildren to theater.Join us in celebrating Mark’s commitment to seizing opportunities, fostering community engagement, and helping others through the Arts and Culture Network. His branding and marketing expertise and active involvement in Collaboration Global are sure to inspire you.

👉 Listen now to explore the profound impact of the arts and the transformative power of community. Don’t miss out on this captivating conversation!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello, and welcome to the Being Human Hidden Depths podcast
with me, myself, Jill Tiny, and my latest guest, mister
Mark Walmsley. Welcome Mark, lovely to have you on board.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Thank you very much. That's a nice title for the tour.
Was it hidden Debts?

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Yes? You a love that, yeah, idea. Just to reiterate,
everyone will have heard a little earlier snippet from me
saying what Hidden Depths is all about? But real human,
aren't we? And we all have this kind of facile
that we put on house business. It's fine, it's great,
everything's okay. We're underneath your paddling like crazy to stay afloat.
And what we want from these conversations is the grit.

(00:42):
You know, the hell you got to where you were before,
and you know how you moved on. And I don't
want the cv of that when I left school, when
I had two gcss or in your case, in my
case it's O levels probably, I don't want all of
that kind of stuff. I want the real journey and
the real story of you being a human being. So
we're peeling the layers of your onion, if that's okay,

(01:04):
and if we get too deep on the onion. You
can tell me to shut up or go away, but
let's find out what the real Mark Wormsley. Okay, So
you and I met through your fabulous ACN network Arts
and Culture Network. Now, for me, arts and culture are
my lifeblood. Although I came along to your network online,

(01:26):
God bless COVID because so much went online and we're
able to explore so many more things. And I don't
technically I'm not an actor or a singer, or a
dancer or a creative an artist or anything like that,
although it's in my genes and I think it's in
everybody's blood somewhere along the line. And you went, you
know what, that's all right, come because you putably know
a few people and you can help people. And so

(01:47):
I did, and I did what I could do to help.
But it just struck me that if anyone needs support
and help in this world at this time, and we
met kind of COVID times when the arts were struggling
and probably still are having the effect of being shut
down for such a long period of time when all
of the things they do are based on momentum of

(02:09):
energy of getting people to shows, getting people to galleries,
getting people to events, and it was all and it
must have been so scary at that time. So my
question to you, just to start the ball rolling, is
why why the Arts and Culture Network for you? What
was your connection that made you go, huh, I think

(02:31):
I should do something here.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
That's a great question because my background is in music
brand and marketing, and I had detours into pharmaceutical marketing, biotech, medtech,
and having studied music and worked as a classical musician,
I then found myself I was sort of captured by
digital in the early nineties and that took me off

(02:57):
that music path. Really it was the fastest running horse
at the time, back in the nineties, and I was
a very early adopter of LinkedIn. I was one of
the first one hundred thousand users apparently, which is nuts
when you think it's over a billion now, which gave
me quite a following, which was really very useful. And

(03:19):
then in two thousand and nine Linkedins allowed people to
start groups. So I thought, well, I want eventually to
get back into the where I need to be, back
in the arts and culture and music sector. So I
started the Arts and Culture Network as a LinkedIn group
in twenty promptly forgot all about it, went off and

(03:42):
did more marketing and branding work and looked at it
as we were approaching lockdown and thought, there are eighteen
thousand people in this group, none of whom have met.
Nobody's corresponded, nobody has had the opportunity to collaborate. So

(04:03):
I decided then to it would because we all were
getting used to zoom, I thought, well why don't we
Why don't I host just a networking event and see
if anybody wants to come? And they did. Wow, that
was back in When did we go into card that's
three four years ago?

Speaker 1 (04:20):
Yeah, twenty twenty, isn't it. I think February March time,
twenty twenty.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
But it gave me the opportunity. I'm never I'm not
shy of the spotlight. I've hosted events, I organize, I've
been toping, I've done those things, you know. So I'm
not afraid the leader in those circumstances. So it made me.

(04:46):
It made me realize that, I mean, my life is
based around finding out where my super passion. I call
it my super passion. It's a cross between your superpower
and your passions, and my superpower evidently seems to be
connecting people people for good and my passion has always
been music, arts and culture. So not that I'm a

(05:07):
particularly well informed or adept practitioner in any of those disciplines,
I just seem to be. I love it and so
so I'm those two things have come together in the
last few years, and so now my side hustle has
accidentally become my main hustle, which is great and I
love it. So it was really to make the most

(05:29):
of my capacity to create connections, but to do so
in a sector that I love. And it was heartwarming
during lockdown to hear the messages and the feedback. You know,
thank you for doing this. It's reduced my sense of
isolation and I've been able to get advice in very
difficult times. So yeah, and we're coming out of it now.

(05:54):
It's still staggers me that the arts and culture sector
is the best place to save the world. Makes more
money for the UK Treasury than sport does yet and
our exports are phenomenal, the beatles, so it does frustrate
me that it's not recognized in the same way as

(06:19):
other sectors are. And things are changing. Things are changing,
So that's why, because I just wanted to help others.
We have a motto in our gang, which is choose
people who will say your name in a room full
of opportunities, and that's how we roll. And the success
stories are wonderful, and it's pleasing for me looking back

(06:40):
on those success stories realizing that actually, you guys wouldn't
have met and done that had I not done this
back then. And so yeah, and I can sit here
hosting these Zoom meetings well into my retirement. I'm very happy.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
But yeah, there's so many things that bund them into
that conversation. One, and I will put a pin in this,
but I'll come back to it. You were in the
classical music business. I didn't realize you're a classical musician.
So I'm very intrigued by that. But two, I think,
going back, the two sides of it is that the
government and a lot of people don't realize the intrinsic

(07:20):
value of the arts. It's good for your wellbeing, it's
good for your mental health, it's good for your physical health.
I mean, you listen to any singer if they don't
have lung capacity and are able to belt it out,
that is feeding their whole system. There were so many
nhs would say, in absolute fortune if more people were

(07:40):
involved in singing and dancing and all of those kind
of things. So this whole industry that, as you say,
it creates more income for the treasury than sport, which
we go, Oh, sport's very good for a sport's very healthy,
but it's competitive, which isn't great for the toxins in
your body. It's also quite poorly funded where everyone's trying

(08:02):
desperately to you know, if you're an amateur at any sport,
it takes forever to get any income to become professional
at it. So there's this dichotomis along the way. So
my question to you is, when you started that back
in twenty twenty, going let's get these people together and
see what happens, had you any kind of concept in

(08:22):
the back of your mind that what you were doing
was kind of life saving from a point of view
of there were people out there that were scared, there
were people out there that didn't know where to turn,
and there were people that were out there that found
your community that you had just kind of gone, oh, well,
there's a few people over here. Let's drag them together

(08:44):
and see what we can do. You were a lifeline
to so many people at that point.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
Well in a very small way, a very real, real
lifeline because one of the things we do with our
membership revenue, and we don't have a huge amount yet
have I think just under three hundred full members, but
it's always been my intention that we would get to
a point where we can start giving most of that

(09:10):
revenue away, but to do so in rather like the
Arts Counsul, but with no application form. Yes, the idea
is if a member thinks something deserves to support, and
if enough of us agree, get the money, go and
make your art. And we've already started doing that. One
of our members and she moved from She was a

(09:34):
very very talented arts marketer and administrator, and she moved
from South Africa to Canada with her five year old
son and husband, and in the process negated her medical
insurance in both countries, only to find out that she
had a very rare form of breast cancer.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
Oh my goodness.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
And so I was able to siphon off some of
our membership revenue and contribute that to the fundraiser that
her sister had started. She raised over one hundred thousand
dollars she accessed the really quite specific medication that she needed,
and I spoke to her about three weeks ago and

(10:16):
she's doing really well. So Yeah, and I often tell
our members if they're if they're full members, they say,
you don't know this, but you've helped that. You've helped
feed seven year old orphan dancers in Kampala. You know,
you've helped support a member who was shafted by a
prime promoter, you know, to cover their legal fees. So

(10:39):
we are doing that in a very at a low level. Already,
I pointed the praise democratic collective philanthropy, and that's that's
how it works. So but I didn't really quite see
that vision at the start. I thought it would be
a couple of zoom meetings during lockdown and that would
be its. But given that we now have one hundred

(11:01):
and fifty two thousand members across eight LinkedIn groups, it's
we know we've hit the establishment radar because we were
one of the answers in a multiple choice survey by
the Arts Council. Hey, but as I say, it's early days. Yeah,

(11:22):
you know, the full membership option is entirely optional, so
it's and we've kept it very low so that it's
to students and anyone who's unemployed.

Speaker 1 (11:33):
But you can't help. But it cross your mind if
one hundred and fifty thousand people were full members, how
much you'd be spending your days doing good all day long,
wouldn't you.

Speaker 2 (11:45):
I know, my neighbors said to me, how many members
have you got, and I said one hundred and fifty
two thousand, and he said, well, if they all paid
you a pounder year, you'd be all right and you
be able to support people. But we're on target to
get to about two thousand members by the end of
the decade if we keep growing same rate. Yeah, so
that will mean we've got the best part of twenty
thousand pounds to donate every month. Yeah, it's kind of

(12:09):
a little from many means a lot to one. That's
you know, that's the process we've got exactly.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
Yeah. I mean it's there are more and more people
doing that, which is what I love. I've said this
before on the podcast. There's a guy called Ricardo Semla
over in Brazil. I haven't checked up on him lately.
He might not even be around anymore, but he did
a TED talk years ago and in it he talks
about a friend of his who was well off, successful entrepreneur,

(12:37):
and he came to him one day and said, Ricardo,
I've done very well with my life. It's time for
me to give back. And Ricardo turns around him and says,
if you're giving back, you took too much in the
first place. This is a really good point, and I
think more and more people now are giving as they
go and it's having that kind of well, if I'm
getting some money and then I'm going to give some
money out and I'm going to see who I can help.

(12:59):
So that's why we've budded up. We've partnered up with
the b one g One as if you've come across them,
So every time we have a new member, every part
of their membership goes to be one g one every
single month, which can be sent out to hundreds of
different charities across the world, and our members get to choose.
It's like, well, what do you want to do this month?
You know, you can have clean water in a village

(13:22):
in Africa, or you can have educational supplies and it's
all to do with sustainable development goals. So we can
choose a goal and then we can look at all
the charities that are connected to that goal and then
choose how many impacts we're going to make. And we've
made thousands of impacts over the year already, just because
little bit, as you say, little bit, little bit, little
bit as you go, we don't miss it so much.
You know, it's not the end of the world. And

(13:44):
the more the membership grows, the more we can make
bigger impacts along the way. And the same thing you say,
when we hit that kind of sustainable number of members
then anything over that becomes money that they can come
to us and go, you know, I've done my pro
bono and they can't afford me. And and I'm like, well,
they have some money, go do do some good in

(14:06):
the world. That springs from the time when I was
asked to do some work in Hackney and this guy said, oh,
there's going to be a government grant and we'll be
able to do this work. And there were five of
us are going to go into Hackney to work with
young people that want you to be entrepreneurs and we're
going to kind of set them off on their first
job career. And we didn't get the grant, so they
all disappeared. Like those people are still there. Can we

(14:28):
not do? There must be some And I was like,
one day, I'm not going to go cap in hand
to anybody. I'm going to be able to give money
out and get money for those kind of things where
we know we can make a difference because the talent
that we've had all this time, we can share it.
So when you've got people in your community that go, oh,
if only and you know that you can help, it's
such a good feeling. And that's the power of organizations

(14:51):
like yours.

Speaker 2 (14:52):
I think also there is I'm not passionate. I'm passionate
about access. I wrote a blog post and I think
I was in it. I said, the best violinist the
world ever saw never picked up a violin, and you
could say that about all sorts of disciplines in life.
They just weren't given the opportunity. So one of the

(15:13):
members of our gang is the East London School of Music,
and I've been helping them because they just need more
instruments and if they can, because they specialize in providing
music lessons that ridiculously low cost to families in East
London who wouldn't be able to afford it. Otherwise. So, yeah,
it's about access and opportunity. There's a lovely saying. Talent

(15:37):
is everywhere, opportunity is not. And that's what That's one
of the things I'm hoping that as we grow, we'll
be able to address.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
And I think what my dream is in the future
is that organizations like ours, as we join up and
we become members of each other's organization and we share
our knowledge and our experience and vice versa, that people
in authority who probably are not doing the best job
at the moment, might be able to look over and go,
they seem to be doing okay, they seem to be

(16:07):
utilizing their money efficiently, they seem to be doing a
lot of good, and we'll go, we'll come over here
and we'll show you how it's done.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
Yeah, one day.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
What's the date today, twenty twenty five, So yeah, well
let's watch this space and see how we go with that.
I love this demo. What was it is a democratic.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
Philo, democratic collective, philanthropy collective.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
Yeah, this is a new way for communities to come together.
And it's because we now have the technology and I
think the cream is rising to the top. From the
point of view of Most people want to do good
and most people want to help each other. So when
you put them all together, as mother Teresa tells us,
or told us in the famous quote, together we can

(16:55):
do something wonderful. I think that's you're demonstrating that beautifully.
So now I have to ask you what instrument did
you play? If you're a musician.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
I started playing the drums when I was seven years old.
Oh that you were popular, upturned saucemans on my bed
with my mother's utensils. And when I kept having lessons
with my drum teacher.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
And.

Speaker 2 (17:26):
When he said you should go and apply for a
place at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London,
I got one of three places from fifty applicants, and
I thought, well, perhaps I ought to take this a
bit more seriously. And I had a wonderful three years there.
And towards the end of my third year, I've got

(17:48):
a West End show to do, and I'd already started
playing in the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra as well,
and I taught, so I had a nice also started
an entertainment agency as well at the time, so I
had one of those. I had a portfolio career in
the late eighties, that you've had.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
Many strings to your bow, if your pardon the punt.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
Yes, so yeah. I guess what I've done ever since
is I've gradually transitioned from one sort of part of
my career to another without having to stop and start again,
which I know is a leap of faith for many people.
I've spoken to many people that are thinking of chucking
in their city job and becoming an artist. And I've

(18:31):
been fortunate in that I've been able to sort of
sort of move from one faster running horse to the
next fastest running horse, and that took me through digital.
I had a web design agency which employed sixteen people
in the nineties and early two thousands, and the entertainment

(18:53):
agency was great fun as well. In the kind of
late eighties early nineties, I organized all the entertainment prods
for ten years wow, which was great fun. Booking Father
Christmas and closing Knightsbridge so that we could do a parade,
that kind of thing. That was great, great fun. I mean,
that was just one of those business moments which was

(19:15):
like a gem because I was sitting in the social
the student union office at the Guildhall, having been appointed
as the social secretary. And I read Cain and Abel
by Jeffrey Archer, and I thought, I want to start
a business. What shall I do? And I thought, well,
I'm in a music college. Perhaps I should represent these

(19:36):
other musicians. And by complete coincidence, the phone rang and
I picked the phone up and it was someone from
Esta Lauder and they wanted a pretty young harpist to
play on their promotion stand on the ground floor at
Harold's for the two weeks on the roll up to Christmas.
So I thought, well that's well. I said, I can
fix that for you, but I do charge a fifteen

(19:56):
percent commission. They said that's no problem. So Music Pla
was born, and I thought I'd better go in and
check if everything was all right. On the first day
and Muhammed al Fayed walked into the department with his
four bodyguards and went over and spoke to the harpist,
who then pointed at me and I thought, oh. So

(20:17):
he came over to me and he said, I gather
you booked the music for the Lorder promotion. I said, yes, sir,
I did you know. We all thought it was perfectly normal,
Sir at that point, and he said, come up to
my office please. I thought, what the hell have I done?
He sat me down in his office and he said,

(20:38):
I loved live music, and I think this is great.
I'm going to require all four promotion areas on the
ground floor to have live music as part of their promotions,
and I'm going to insist that they book it through you.
I went from zero to about five pounds a month
as I walked out of Harold's. And that was just great,

(21:02):
and that lasted for about ten years. It was wonderful
and one of the pleasing things that I did. One
of the one of the things I remember was that
there was a there was a jazz pianist, modern jazz
pianist called Jonathan g who I thought was great, really
quite progressive and model. And I said, I rang him

(21:25):
up and said, look, you won't want to do this.
It's it's just light dinner jazz in the you know,
the perfumery inherits. He said, no, I'll do it. So
he did it, and his first CD came out and
he sent me a copy and there was and I
was dedicate. It was dedicated to me because and I
rang him and said, why why am I dedicated on
your Modern Jazz Trio CD and he said, because you

(21:49):
gave me the job that paid for the studio that
we used to record that it comes around. You know,
it seems like.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
That you sound like a natural bal entrepreneur, the fact
that you were thinking in those ways back in those days,
because when I was in the seventies and eighties, it
was like get a job, get your head down, get
a salary at the end of it. But you were
looking at opportunity and seeing what was out there in
the right place, right time, for sure. But at the
same time, if you hadn't picked the phone up, if

(22:18):
you hadn't thought on your feet and done those things, well.

Speaker 2 (22:22):
I did it slightly before that and again afterwards because
before that I had a big transit van for my
drums at college and it occurred to me that the
students in London were all moving from flat to flat
and their parents up north didn't want to drive down
and help them move. So I started the Gently Does
It Removal Company while I was at college, and before that,

(22:46):
even my father used to run a mobile disco wow
all the parents' association events at school, and he was
asked if I must have been about seventeen at the time.
He was asked if he wanted to become the resident
disc jockey of the Bowling Alley on South End Pier
and he said, no, I don't, but my son might.

(23:07):
I did. That was that was a first as well.
But then and then digital really was a big eye opener.
I sent my first email in ninety three, taught myself
web design in ninety four, and set up the web
design agency in ninety five. And it was.

Speaker 1 (23:25):
The right time, right place.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
Really, yeah, it was really. I get easily excited about
new stuff and I love being an early adopter, so
just occasionally that means you're in the right place at
the right time.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
So were you one of these people that Q up
for a new iPhone?

Speaker 2 (23:43):
No, I'm not quite that bad, ye, no.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
So let's find out a little bit more about you
from the point of view of where are you from
and who's at home with you at the moment, who's
family for you?

Speaker 2 (24:01):
So I was born in Guildford in Surrey. I'm the
oldest of three boys and my father was offered a
My mom was a pe teacher in Surrey and we
moved to Hockley in Essex, not far from South End
and where my mum became the swimming teacher at the

(24:22):
primary school that I was going to and my father
was working at Ford's. He died in eighty five of
lung cancer. Sadly I was only about twenty three, I
think at the time. And then I went to music
college in London and then moved to Reigate after I
got married, had two young two children, and then in

(24:45):
twenty ten my first wife and I separated and I
moved back to keep an eye on my mum. In Hockley,
bumped into Joe, who I had grown up with in
the same street as children, and we were We've been
married seven years. We're together for fourteen years now, I think,

(25:07):
and it's a proper blended family. It's great. And we
now have two grandchildren, so it's and I take Wednesdays
off to spend with them.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
Oh lovely.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
Hallie is two and Alphie is one. I'm considered quite
brave taking them out on my own, but it just occasionally.
I took them out for ice cream and this old,
this lady, elderly lady, was sitting beside behind us on
the seafront at South End, and she said, can I
just say, it's lovely to see a man taking his

(25:40):
children out for tea. And I said, I'm afraid you
put it wrong on two counts. One they're not my
children there, and two they're not technically my grandchildren. They're
my step grandchildren. My father, my mum's father, my grand
my maternal grandfather. He was widowed and he remarried when

(26:01):
he was seventy three and married thirty six year old.

Speaker 1 (26:05):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (26:06):
Yes, and she's still alive. So I took my two
step grandchildren to meet her and we worked out the relationship.
I said, Mary, these are your step step great great grandchildren.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
Bless sir. But she got good after that.

Speaker 2 (26:23):
I was well because my stepmother, No, my step grandmother
was younger than my mother. Yes, So I do keep
warning my wife Joe, that I've got form in my family.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
That's quite a complicated family tree to try and explain
it is.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
So we're in Holebridge now. We downsized a couple of
years ago when our last offspring moved out, and Joe's
done a fantastic job turning sixty square meters into one
hundred and fifteen without extending Wow, and we love it
down here. It's a lovely friendly little village. And because
Ferry Road stops at the river, people don't go through

(27:05):
this village. They go to it. And we have a
pub on the river called the smugglers Den that has
live music four nights a week. So it's about a
three minute walk and about a ten minute more back.

Speaker 1 (27:17):
That sounds a little bit of paradise right there. Do
you perform at the smugglers In?

Speaker 2 (27:24):
I have done. Yeah, we have every other Wednesday. We
do open mic and if there's no drama and they
won't gone, I jump behind the kit as a kit
permanently in the pub.

Speaker 1 (27:34):
Yeah, like hold me back, hold me back. No, I
did not do it. Oh, that's brilliant. Our youngest and
she learned to play the drums when she was about
eleven or twelve, and we converted a garage so we
could put her out there and just knock yourself out,
have fun with and she did. But she was one
of these kids that loved playing. She played piano ukulele.

(27:56):
I didn't like people watching her listening, so she just
on her own here off in the bedroom sometimes and
it was really quite good. She never passed any exams
in her piano. But because the first exam was so traumatic,
she did want to do it again. I said, look,
do you enjoy learning to play? She said yes. I said,
so if we take away the exams, do you still
want lessons? She said yes. Okay, So she never took

(28:17):
a lesson, but her teacher would say to us, oh,
she's about level grade four now, or she's about grade seven.
I think she's grade eight. If she wanted to take
an EXAMT No, she doesn't. That's fine.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
Oh there's no reason why she should. I think one
of the inspiring moments for me was when I was nine,
my dad was going to take me to Ronnie Scott's
to see Buddy Rich seventy one, nineteen seventy one, and
he was called away on business, so my mum took me,
and she was a bit daunted by heading into Soho
in the early seventies. Different. Yeah, and at half time,

(28:49):
I mean, the man was amazing. He was inspirational, and
Ronnie Scott's is really quite intimate, so you're quite close,
and it was just fantastic. And Ronnie Scott came on
at the interval to tell his blue jokes and had
spotted a nine year old in the audience and called
one of his girls over and said, take the young
man backstage to meet buddy.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
No.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
Yeah, And so I walked into this dressing room and
was the mountain of a man sweating profusely. And he
reached up and got some sticks down and gave them
to me and said, if you can play a paradidal
on my knee, you can keep them right. So, but
then what I loved was shortly before he died, and

(29:34):
I've still got the sticks. Of course, shortly before he died,
he played the Cliff Pavilion in South End, so we
went again, and I know the backstage team there, so
they got me backstage again during the interval and I
said hello, buddy. Then he looked up and I said,
you won't remember this, but when I was nine, I
met you a buddy at Scott's at the interval. You

(29:56):
gave me a pair of your sticks, and he reached
for another pair and he he handed them to me
and he said, if your paradidlem has got faster, you
can keep these. So yeah, I love it, I love it.

Speaker 1 (30:12):
I must have been Ronie. Scott's is one of my
favorite places to go. We went, you know, there's like
no talking during the performance, and you know, blah blah blah,
there's all these rules. And we went to me and
my daughter, she got me tickets and we went to
the Earth, Wind and Fire what's left of them now.
And then it was funny because we were kind of
I wanted to get up and dance because it's like that,

(30:33):
you know, but you're not allowed. It's not done. It's
not done. So they did about three or four songs
and all of a sudden, one person, one person stood
up just over there, and I'm like, good enough for me.
Everybody did. Everybody did, and the place was jumping. It was,
and they carried on and as they as they finished,
and we all calmed ourselves down and they left the stage.

(30:56):
I was able to shake everyone of them by their hands.
Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
Ronnie Scott's that there's no backstage changing room. You have
to go to the front. You have to come through
the audience to get to the changing room. Yeah, yeah, yeah, moments.

Speaker 1 (31:12):
Oh, we should do an event in London. Shouldn't wait
to get our mutual communities together, Liboration Global and ACM,
and let's let's have some music and have a party.

Speaker 2 (31:24):
That would be a lovely idea we had. We just
had our first New York face to face.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
Oh I remember you talking about that. How did it go?

Speaker 2 (31:30):
It was wonderful. There's me sitting in leafy, rural riverside
Wholebridge Village in Essex, while over in Manhattan, sixteen members
are meeting themselves, meeting each other. None of them had
met before. They all went to Bobby Van's Grille in Manhattan.
They facetimed me and sent me a video. So that's

(31:53):
and I just I sat back and I thought, whoa,
that's that's just blowing my mind that sixteen people met
for the first time and had a wonderful time. They
all know me, but they've never met each other. Yeah,
we're doing another one on Valentine's and I'd love to
get there, but we're going to the Lincoln Center on
Valentine's for another We'll see.

Speaker 1 (32:16):
It's such a small world, now, isn't it. When you
think about it.

Speaker 2 (32:19):
I think technically it is because it used to be
six degrees of separation and it's now five apparently less
less than that it could well be.

Speaker 1 (32:28):
Yeah, I mean the stories that I've heard of people
asking at a networking event for one guy said he
wanted Jamie Oliver because he did. In fact, he's another drummer.
Oh what's his name. It'll come to me in a minute,
poor someone. Anyway, he asked for Jamie Oliver because he

(32:50):
made treehouses.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
That was his camera. He's a very good friend of mine.
We've known each other for forty years.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
I thought it might have been a long aside. Well,
he was a member Collaboration Global. Yes, when we used
to do face to face meetings. He come along to that.
And so his story is he asked for Jamie Oliver
to build him a treehouse, and somebody in the group
that he was in stood up at this general meeting
and said, oh, I can do that for you. In Oh,

(33:17):
we've known each other for years. You never told me
you knew Jamie Oliver. Well, you never asked. And then
Jamie Oliver turned into Elton John, which turned into Al Fayed,
which turned into al Fayed's daughter and basically, oh, and
then that turned into a member of Loyalty. I don't know.
It went big, big, big, big big. He's now sold

(33:38):
so many tree houses to incredible people around the world,
and his tree houses like well, back back then, I
think that he started, price was sixty thousand pounds up
to about three hundred thousand, so you imagine now it's
probably ridiculous amount.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
Yeah, yeah, I corresponded with him quite recently. He came
down and stayed with us a few years ago, lovely
man and I took him to the BNIM meeting that
I went to in Billa Ricky, and he told the
story there. So it's yeah, it's a you know, it's
a great story. It's got to be brave and do
it well.

Speaker 1 (34:12):
This is it. If you don't ask, you don't get.
And this six degrees of separation, I think it's more
like three or four. It's because it doesn't take long
to work out, especially with people like you and me
that have got a bit of a you know, not
a following. We're connected and we've been doing this for
donkeys years, so we know a lot of people and
once your brain clicks into oh he knows, and there

(34:34):
you go, there's you link. All you've got to do
is a couple of hot skips and a jump and
you've got the person you're looking for. But a lot
of people in business, especially if you've done web design
and all of that, they don't know who they're looking for.
So you're making a website and you're not sure how
it's going to be because the person who's asked you
to make the website hasn't got a clue. Oh I
can sell to anybody, yes, but you know who's your person,

(34:58):
because you want your website to sound like it's speaking
just to them. As a business coach, that's the sort
of thing that I would sit down and talk to
people about is finding out who really are you selling to,
or who do you want to sell to? Because you
don't want to sell to everybody, Yes I do. I
really know you don't actually, because not everyone's fun to
work with, but you want to have fun. I had
one guy I turned down because he wanted to be

(35:19):
the best in the world and okay, he did events, okay,
and there's only two major competitors in the world, and
I want to beat them, right, what happens? And he
told me about these events he put on all around
the world and they had huge to the Millennium Dome
that they have put events on in all the biggest

(35:40):
stadiums in the world, and so, so what are you
doing at the events? He said, Well, we're selling you know, hardware,
So what's the hardware? Who are your customers? He said, Well,
like the mod and you know government departments, So what's
the hardware? Well, you know, tanks and rifles and guns,
and no, I'm not why would I coach you sell

(36:02):
more guns? I don't think so. So we don't all
want to work with everybody. We've got a line. We've
got the people that we enjoy working with, so find
more of those. Why would you want to work with
someone just because they've got the money? That makes it
a hard job.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
Yeah, and there is a common sense approach. I think
Seth Godin said, find your smallest viable audience and become
the best option for it. Yeah, and I've introduced that
concept and minimalist marketing all over. So yeah, you can't.

(36:37):
You can't boil the ocean.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
No exactly exactly, and we might only be a small
drip within that ocean. But everything around us is connected,
So let's attract the right people to us. And I
think that's why you focusing on I mean, you could
say anyone can come to my community, you know. And
there are people that are not in the arts as

(37:01):
an industry as such, like myself I've come along and
I might not be in the arts, but I get it,
I understand it, and I can help those people within it.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
Yeah, A good, a really healthy percentage of the people
in our community are those who support the practitioners and
the professionals, and we need that help, you know. So
there's absolutely no reason why, you know, there is a so.
Kel Haney is one of our members. She's in Portland
and Maine. She's a very very good fundraiser for arts organizations.

(37:32):
And she's not she doesn't perform, she doesn't play, she
doesn't write, she's not a practitioner in that respect, but
she's really really good and we need that kind of support,
especially now.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
So yeah, yeah, it is finding those people. I mean,
to be fair, I do sing and I do act,
but nobody would pay me any money for it. That's
not that's not my day job, for sure. But I
do write. I have people paid me money to write.
That's what I love doing as well. So I think
we've all got it in us, and I think I
can't reiterate this enough. If you haven't got any part

(38:05):
of the arts in your life, then your health is
going to be suffering somewhere along the line. You need
to find an outlet, whether it's music, whether it's art,
whether any sort of creativity that is going to connect
your soul. Yeah, so that you can lift your heart
to well.

Speaker 2 (38:24):
I wanted to. I wanted to start an annual year
a day per year, probably since Cecilia's Day in November,
because she was the patron saint of music apparently, but
in which music is banned for the whole day. Oh gosh,
So what will we not have? We won't have television
would be pretty boring. No radio, there'll be no concerts.

(38:50):
You can't listen to you to Spotify, you can't you know,
if you took it out for the whole day, Oh,
I'd be crying. Oh.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
I've even got it in the background now you can't
hear it because it's Mike out. I've got music going
on in the background as we're talking.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
Well, it saved my life. I had a cancer scare
a couple of years ago, and I created a joy playlist,
which of pieces that I knew would get the hairs
up on the back of my neck. If music can
have that kind of physical impact on you through your brain,
then what else can you do? You know? And I
have no empirical evidence to suggest that it helped, but

(39:26):
it certainly made me feel better.

Speaker 1 (39:28):
So yeah, yeah, it's the same when I go to theater.
We love a musical theater and I like to go
once a month if I can, because it's like a fix.
It's like a drug because the minute you sit there
and that overture goes on, like you say, hairs on
the back of your neck goes like what and I'm
getting this woosh energy. And if I walk out of

(39:49):
that show and I'm singing and I remember the tune
and it's like, yeah, this is going to stay with
me for least a month, and it just makes you
ten feet taller. It's just a shame you've got going
London all the time. We're lucky we live near Chichester,
so we can pop into there and see a show
over there.

Speaker 2 (40:05):
You'll get it before the West End does normally when yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
And we get in the great reviews and a lot
cheaper as well, which is handy. But it is like
a it's it should be a drug. It should be
on prescription. It's definitely as you say. I mean, most
babies come into the world with a playlist don't they.
They're set up to, you know, come into this world
with enjoying something that their parents already think is amazing.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
Absolutely, and there's a lovely saying. Before a child talked,
she sings, before a child walks, She dances, Yes, and yeah,
it's all that creativity is their first.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
And we see that in our grandchildren, don't we. I mean,
we've got one that got three one's two year old,
and two that are under six months. But they hear
music and they're like this. And the one that's just
turned to she's just learning how to sing the words
of jingle bells and she's happy that she knows them,
and she knows when the you know, she punched the
air with the hoe kind of it's just so lovely

(41:07):
to see this. And dancing, Oh my goodness, she can't
sit still, so and she into the more on a soundtrack.
That's the big thing at the moment.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
She has yell is as well and frozen all over,
frozen yes, and strangely, dear Evan Hanson. She loves them okay,
which is great, so good. She's a big fan of
Dolly Parton as well.

Speaker 1 (41:31):
I can't wait to take them to the theater. It's
it's something that they will They don't get to choose
they you know, they're going to have to love it.
There's no option. I mean, my husband had never been
to a show before I went out with him. He's like, oh,
do I have to? And my daughter's husband was like, oh,
it's a musical. But we took him to the right
ones and they're like, that's it. Now they've done. My

(41:52):
husband's favorite is now they miss and he goes every
so often and he cries all the time. And we
were lucky enough to have a private concertant with Russell
Watson on a recent holiday and he did a song
from Lamy's and you just look around the room and
everyone is like, oh, this is so good. You can't
help yourself. But it touches something within you, doesn't It's

(42:15):
like a piece of art touches something within you and
it does you good? Does you good? That's all you
could say. So I think what you're doing is beautiful.
And I think bringing these people together, whether they are
conductors of a philharmonic, music writers, singers, artists, sculptors, so
many different types of people, but they all connect in

(42:37):
a way that they're meant to be together.

Speaker 2 (42:39):
Because we require yeah, and we don't require language to
the same extent as other sectors. With music and art
and dancing. You know, there's a saying, isn't there that's
that's about as crazy as you know. Talking about music
is like dancing about architecture. You know, you don't need

(43:01):
it doesn't need the language, you know. And I love
it when there are opportunities for the recipient of that
or it took to take part in that process. So
if I ever see some abstract art, I'm looking for
what I'm looking for the horses in there. I'm looking
for the you know, the things that the artists didn't intend.
And I love that when that, when that works it

(43:23):
because I feel part of the creative process because that's
what I'm taking away from the picture. I've come up
with a new phrase called picture hook. When I'm doing
branding and marketing advice for artists and trying to get
find them how they're going to be special, I asked them,
what's your picture hook? You know? And they so, Rossie

(43:46):
is an abstract oceanic artist. That's her picture hook now
working for her.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
So, yeah, that's a really good idea. Yeah, I can
I can imagine that. It's it's that individuality about it,
isn't it. That's what's so beautiful. You can't recreate when
somebody's got everyone's got their own special way. Do you
know what. I'm going to go and paint a picture
for the first time since I was at school with

(44:14):
my daughter. We've got a class to go to and
it's like supposed to keep you very calm. We'll see
see how that works. But I'm going to go and
do some painting. Interesting before you go. Mark, And I
usually ask this some people when you were little, when
you were at seven or eight, I guess I'm thinking
you're going to tell me the drums. But what was

(44:36):
a happy memory for you? What can you think back
on that is something that's that you remember as a
really good time for you.

Speaker 2 (44:45):
I think it would have been the first time I
went on an airplane was when I was seven, from
South End Airport to somewhere in the where was it.
It would have been in the Netherlands or Belgium end, Yeah,
and it felt like a around the world trip, you know.

(45:06):
But I remember I've got two younger brothers and so
we all piled into it was this there was this
sort of dummy town in which children could drive four
wheeled bicycles and that was just, you know, wonderful because

(45:26):
my father used to put me on his lap and
let me steer. Yes, it's like unsafe late sixties, you know.

Speaker 1 (45:33):
Yeah I did that as well.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
Yeah, yeah, so that was a very fond memory. But yeah, drums.
I can remember the day I was probably a bit
older than that, when I decided that classical music was
going to be my career. I can remember what we
were playing, the Circus Polka by Stravinsky, and I thought, yeah,
this is this I'm enjoying, this is me, which was

(45:57):
which was great. And then I can remember the day
I saw the web in color for the first time
and I thought, change the direction there, thank you.

Speaker 1 (46:08):
So yeah, it interesting to hear you talk about those
things that happened that we kind of taken for granted,
like you know, creating your websites and being around to
I mean, it didn't even cross my mind that I
could be the person that could help people create a website.
It just kind of been by osmosis. I guess I

(46:29):
was busy having babies or something at that point. But
to hear you say that and to hear you sort
of go through that that aeroplane adventure, that trip that
you remember that was kind of your For me, looking
back at your life is like the signaling of you
want some adventure in your life, and you were looking

(46:50):
out for it, you were read it, and you go,
I like that, I like this is interesting. I like that.
I'm going to have some of that. So for you
to decide at a young age that, yeah, this drumming thing,
this could be really useful, not many kids really kind
of hone in on it. What I find is a
lot of people with their happy early memories is you
can join the dots and see why they are who

(47:12):
they are today. And you've got so many dots, for goodness,
they're all over the place.

Speaker 2 (47:18):
Well, I kind of lived by the motto you should
always regret the things you did, not the things you
didn't do. And and you know you it might not
work out as you'd hoped, But if you don't know,
if you don't try, you'll never know. You know. If
I had not started this group fourteen years ago on LinkedIn,

(47:43):
then I wouldn't be doing this now, you know. So
if I hadn't sold my web design agency. I might
still be in that, you know. Unfortunately I sold it
at the beginning of two thousand and eight, just before
the recession, so I was a going to take two
years off while everyone else was worrying about money. It
was just accidental timing. But yeah, and we did. We

(48:05):
did some accidental timing, great timing when we downsize during lockdown.
We couldn't do it now. We wouldn't get enough for
the house, the big house, and we wouldn't have been
able to afford this one. But uh, and literally our
last mortgage payment was the first one that went up,
so we were very accidentally perfect. And then the war started,

(48:27):
and then the cost of living crisis, and you know,
it all just started piling on after we'd sold that
sold at the house, so accidentally good timing.

Speaker 1 (48:38):
I think, well, it sounds like you're blessed, and you're
probably blessed because of the wonderful things that you do
and the people that you help, and knowing that you've
got ACN and the income from that that you're able
to support some of these people that need your help.
I think that's a beautiful thing. So thank you so
much for chatting to us today. Mark if somebody wants

(48:58):
to get hold of you, find out more about ACN,
or even if they want some branding done for their business,
what's the best way to get hold of you?

Speaker 2 (49:08):
Mark Wormsley dot co dot uk. So that's w A
L M. S l E. Y is the website for
the branding and marketing work that I do. If you
search Arts and Culture Network you will find us. So
it's Arts and Culturenetwork dot com. But literally if you
search Arts and Culture Network, where we're there and you.

Speaker 1 (49:31):
Have loads of meetings all over the place. Thank you
for people to do.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
May days are like a world tour on zoom. It's great.

Speaker 1 (49:36):
Oh love love it. Yeah, Well, hopefully I'll be joining
you very soon on one of those, but thank you
so much for in the meantime. And of course, if
you want to meet Mark, he's also a member of
Collaboration Global and he'll be popping into some of our
guest meetings as well. So if you want to come
to any of our Collaboration Global guest sessions, just go
to an event, write a search for Collaboration Global or

(49:57):
go to Collaboration Global dot com and you will find
a place where you can book on and find us
as well with lots of other members as well as
lots of guest speakers and fun along the way. Because
it's not fun, it's not worth doing. Thank you again. Mark,
it's been really good fun chatting to you. I really
appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (50:16):
Thanks Jilli, it's been great fun.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
Thank you, thank you. Bye.