Season 03 Episode 14
John Mark McMillan, Platinum-selling singer-songwriter

Chris Allen: I think the really cool part about this is having somebody that I’ve known this long on the show has been really something that I’m really looking forward to. So John Mark, welcome to the Entrepreneur’s Studio.

John Mark McMillan: Well, thank you.

Chris: The John Mark McMillan.

John Mark: Yes. Well, it’s an honor.

Creating meaning in your work

Chris: But I think some of our audience knows that you’re a platinum award-winning songwriter and a successful entrepreneur to boot. But one of the things that I was thinking about, the type of conversation that I wanted to have with you is like, artists and entrepreneurs have got a lot in common. One of the biggest things is making meaningful connections with audiences or customers, and creating meaning really seems to be kind of like the juice or the engine behind your songwriting. Tell us a little bit about how meaning-making impacts your work as a songwriter.

John Mark: Yeah, totally. These days people talk a lot about value, about giving people value, especially on social media where you’re not talking about dollars and cents, you’re talking about creating value. It’s hard for me sometimes. First of all, I don’t think value is a bad term, but as a songwriter it’s like, what type of value am I really bringing to people? I’m not really an entertainer and there’s a lot of artists who are great entertainers. I think what I do can be entertaining. For me, it’s helpful to think of what I do is offer people meaning. I’ve been thinking a lot about just the whole idea of meaning.

As I look back, I realize in a lot of ways, meaning is my primary asset. It’s what I have to give people. Anytime that I try to create something in order to have an impact, I have less of an impact than when I create something with meaning and then look for an opportunity to see that thing go. I’ve decided over the years that the engine that drives everything that I do, my business, my art, I even look at it as a ministry, too, because I feel like I’m serving people on those different fronts. When I look at the engine that drives it all, it’s really meaning that drives it. I think when you talk about meaning, what we’re really talking about is the why question.

I was thinking a lot about this interview because I haven’t done a lot of business podcasts before. I’m a business person, I make a living. I own my own tiny little record company. It just has me and my wife on it. Maybe someday I’ll have some other people on it. So I am a business person, but I was thinking what do I have to offer the business community or the entrepreneurial community? I think that or what came to mind is this idea that this why question could be the driving factor for everything that you do. And there’s a lot of ways to make a living. There’s a lot of ways to have a business. There’s a lot of ways to make money. There’s a lot of good ways to make money. There’s probably some lesser good ways to make money. For me though, the best way to make a living is to do something meaningful because I tend to think ...

I had a friend one time who said, “If I got to chop a tree down, I’m going to spend all day sharpening the ax. I’m going to spend five minutes chopping the tree down.” It feels like for me when I’m doing something that doesn’t flow from that meaningful place, I feel like I spend a lot of time trying to chop that tree down. I spend a lot of time trying to get people to pay attention to my music or to buy tickets to my shows or whatever it is that I’m trying to do to support my family or grow my business. But when I make something with meaning, I still have to do those other things, but it’s just a sharper ax. It just moves so much better. It has such a greater impact when it comes from that meaningful place. It’s almost like, I put a lot of work on the front end into creating something meaningful, and then it just kind of goes, and you still got to do work to make it go.

It doesn’t just go on its own. But it’s so much smoother. It works out so much better when I come from that place. And there are times in my career, because I’ve been doing this for over 20 years now, or moments when things were really hard, when it’s like things weren’t working, and when I look back, one of the commonalities during those seasons was that I had gotten beyond myself and I was trying to make things happen from the business side without having that meaningful thing there to drive it. Things always seemed to turn around when I stopped, and I went back and made the art the first thing. When I dug into the art instead of trying to find the audience for the art, it’s like I’d stopped and started making stuff again that mattered. And then it became easier to find an audience when I was doing something that mattered than to take something that may just be a good thing and try and force it on an audience. Does that make sense?

Noticing what distracts you

Chris: It makes a lot of sense. There’s, I’d say, a fine balance, right? Because if you think about it, what got you beyond yourself and got away from the meaning was probably, and I think you should talk about this, there’s probably a little bit of pressure to continue to perform in order to have your progress to continue or your needs to be met, and things like that. What created that distance between moving away from the meaning and needing to actually get in front of an audience or do the thing to perform in order to do what? What was the thing that you saw yourself moving towards that moved you away from the meaning making?

John Mark: Sure. At different times, it’s been different things. I mean, it’s a little bit of a battle every day. It’s like, maybe early on we started to realize with touring when an album comes out that first year is good and sometimes the team would be like, “That year was great. Let’s go out and do it again.” And we go out, and the next year, the numbers are down and it’s like, “Wow, that’s hard.” That’s always hard because you’re doing one thing and you think, “Oh, next year is going to be even better than this year.” But there’s so many times I should’ve just stopped and made a new record and put the time in to make the new record instead of trying to make more out of the season I was currently in or maybe the season I was currently over. So that’s one thing.

I think the other thing is when I first — because I knew nothing about this stuff, and that’s one thing about music business is I guess there are music business courses and things now, but I didn’t go to one. I don’t even know that there were many of those types of things available, which honestly, a lot of that stuff wouldn’t help me much now because everything’s changed so much in the past 20 years. But I had to figure it out on my own. So when things first started to go, I was like, oh, it’s only up and to the right. It’s only, the trajectory is only good and you start to take some things for granted.

You take your audience for granted. You take that relationship for granted. The other people who are with you, sometimes you take them for granted, not on purpose and not even necessarily from an ego standpoint, though that comes into play sometimes, too. But it’s more so from the fact that you just start getting busy and you’re like, “People actually like me. Human beings are buying tickets to see me and hear my songs. Some of my songs are on the radio. This is happening.” You just get so busy, you get tied up in that side of it where I think things shift a little bit. I feel like I need to spend 80% of my time focused on the meaning making and the 20% of the time figuring out how to monetize the meaning or create opportunities for the meaning to, well, I’ve obviously got to figure out how to live a sustainable life, right?

Chris: Yeah, for sure.

John Mark: And so, creating those opportunities. But I think it’s very tempting sometimes when things are going really, really well to switch that out and maybe start spending 80% of my time on the more business related things. I guess it’s not really business versus art because both parts are part of the business and I guess that’s the point, but start on the monetization stuff. Trying to figure out new ways to make money, start to figure out how to get more out of each thing. None of that is bad. But I’ve realized when things shift to where I’m spending 80% of my time doing that, I actually do worse. I do a lot more work and I don’t get the return. Then when it sort of switched around and it’s like 80% of my time is spent on making meaning and connections and community, and then spend 20% of my time figuring out how to make a living off of it.

Chris: See, that right there though requires I’d say a pretty significant amount of self-awareness, situational awareness. Sometimes I think business owners, entrepreneurs struggle with something similar, which is there’s some why that made their thing great at some point. And what you’re talking about is the thing that made and makes your stuff great is the meaning making and you know how to do that. And that is a big part of your art, right?

John Mark: Yeah.

Identifying your “why” so you can know your “how”

Chris: It isn’t the delivery of the art only through music. There’s something else that’s going on. One of the things that I think would be good to talk about is talk about maybe a moment where you had the a-ha of like, “I’m spending 80% of my time.” What was the situation that you were in that was your biggest a-ha moment of like, “I need to go back to the meaning making”?

John Mark: Totally. I think this is where some of this language began for me because I was doing it before, but I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have been able to articulate it the way I do now. But there are definitely times looking back in the past 20 years where things were not going good. And not going good, meaning there’s less interest in what I’m doing. The thing about being an artist, and this is true for everyone, do you think of the Rolling Stones or Prince or Beyonce or Taylor Swift, you think of them as only going up. But there are waves and the super huge artists, their waves roll in an upward trajectory, but no one is there forever. I think when you’re young, when you’re in your 20s and you’re have five good years, you’re like, “This is it. This is not going to stop.” And then you maybe plateau for a while or maybe even have a-

Chris: A regression.

John Mark: Yeah, exactly. You’re like, “Why is this happening? What am I doing differently?” And then there was a point probably about five years ago, maybe a year or two before the pandemic when things just weren’t working very well. It can be for any number of reasons. I mean, the music industry is in constant change, constant change. And there are these big changes that happen every 10 years or at least have as long as I’ve been in it. We could talk about that if you wanted to, but there are these big changes, but there are little changes, too, where things you used to do don’t work anymore.

I reached the point where things were not working very well. I was having a hard time doing the things that I had previously done before. There’s this real interesting thing in the music industry because no one can really say what good and bad music is. You can say what awful music is. Then there’s moments where you’re like, “There’s something about that that’s incredible.” But for the most part, you can’t really say what good and bad music is. If you watch any type of movie about, what do they call that? The biopic?

Chris: Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm.

John Mark: They all have the same thing where everyone’s like, “That’ll never work. That’s not going to work. That’s never going to work.” Then of course, it does. And that’s the movie, right?

Chris: Yep.

John Mark: It does. And so no one really knows. No one really knows what is good and bad. Everything is sort of a perception. If you seem like you’re on an upwards trajectory, it’s easy to get people around you. It’s easy to get people interested in what you’re doing from an industry perspective. But if you seem like you’re going in the other direction, it’s hard to get anybody to pick up the phone. This is not real estate where you’re like, “That’s obviously worth this much because this is where it is and this is what’s around it.” But I’ll write a song, and there’s no way for anyone to know that it’s good unless the one before it did good. They’re like, “Well, that one will probably do good.”

You get in that type of situation. There are those ups and downs, and I was in one of those really difficult, low moments. I was like, “What am I doing?” I was like, “What am I actually doing?” I realized in that moment, I’ve never really articulated why it is I do what I do. I think I knew it deep down at different moments and at different times it was probably different, but I’d never really been able to articulate and I decided I want to articulate why it is that I do what I do. I realized especially with the way the music industry and honestly, the way probably most industries work now, you’re not just doing one thing. You’re doing five things.

If you have a restaurant, you’re still doing social media. If you’re doing, I don’t know if you’re whatever you’re selling, I mean, my brother-in-law runs a farm and he has a social media team. It’s like, you’re doing multiple things. I realized that when you don’t know or you can’t articulate why it is you do what you do, it’s really difficult to get all those things to work together or it can be very difficult. But when you know or have a general idea or able to articulate why you’re doing what you’re doing and you’re like, “Well, we can do this or this with social media, but this is what we’re doing.” So when we’re not sure what to do, let’s do that. Let’s talk about that and we can get off, and go over here and we can talk about this and we can do that.

There’s all kinds of things we can do. But if I ever have to choose or if I ever don’t know what to do, it’s like, well, this is what we’re doing, so how do we do that? Then you move from the why to the how. But how is very hard at times if you don’t know what the why is. But I’m convinced that that can be very helpful in any business because if you know what the why is, not just the why for you, the why can’t just be making money and it’s good to make money. Everyone needs to make a living. It’s nice to do all this stuff. I like money, too. I don’t dislike money. But I don’t think that for most people, not for everyone, but I don’t think for most people, money alone is enough incentive to carry you through the long term. I mean, it’s nice to make money. Now if you’re not making money, everything will stop.

Chris: It’s a demotivator, for sure.

John Mark: It’s a demotivator, for sure. But for me, I feel like most people need to be able to know what they’re doing. If you’re making money, it’s because you’re making somebody’s life better or something, right? Generally, I can’t think of too many ways to make money where you’re not at least trying to make someone’s life better or at least they think you’re making their life better, right?

Chris: Yeah.

Being a voice for others

John Mark: So what is the why? Whatever it is you do, you’re obviously serving somebody. Even things that seem mundane and normal are really not when you think about it, because touching human lives, you’re helping humans live. You’re helping humans pursue their dreams. If you serve a restaurant or even a chain of restaurants, so like there’s restaurant owners, there are people who dreamed about that restaurant and you’re touching their lives and you are part of their dream. If you can dream for them, you are so much better at what you do just by being able to do that.

Because if you’re dreaming for them, you know what they need, maybe even more than they know what they need. But also they feel that from you. Whatever it is that you do, if you can dream for the people that you’re serving, I’m convinced, you can do a better job than as if you’re just doing it for money. And that sounds kind of bad because there’s nothing wrong with making money. But I just think in my world, and I know people who exemplify the opposite of what I’m saying, so I realize that this isn’t like a prescription. But for me, I feel like I actually do better in business when I serve the people better or I should say all the things I need to do in business are easier and they work better when I’m serving people better.

Chris: Yeah, you’re operating from the why.

John Mark: Yeah, I’m operating from the why.

Chris: Yeah, that’s really good. That’s a big part of your brand, too. I mean, you’ve built a brand. I’d say honesty and authenticity is what people expect from you, whether with your discography, you’ve got a whole range of things you’ve experienced so that you’ve been willing to be vulnerable and share. And that has become really a big part of your brand. I think something that I heard you talk about the other day, which I thought was really good, was a part of the way that you’re serving and a part of the thing that creates this meaningful connection is giving other people a voice and you’re saying something that they’ve been trying to say or that they’ve wanted to say maybe that they’ve not been able to. And there’s an expression that can come from that, and that is sort of a source of sharing. I think that’s one of the things that would be great for you to talk about a little bit is how you give people a voice and that’s a part of your service to your community.

John Mark: Absolutely. I realized something not long ago when even just looking at my social media numbers like, why did this video do really well and this video did not do really well? If there are similar formats and there’s not much different as far as the way they were done, there’s all those little things that if you do wrong, the algorithm isn’t going to treat you very well. But if you kind of know how it works, you’re like, why did this one do well and this didn’t do well? And I realized something. People don’t share your content because they think you’re cool, mostly. Sometimes, you see someone playing a guitar and they’re just wailing. You’re like, “That’s just cool. I’m going to share it.” Most of the time, they don’t do that. Most of the time, people share things because they deep down want to share themselves.

And so when someone sings a song that feels like you or resonates with you, when there’s a lyric or even some of my videos where I’m just talking, I realize people are not sharing it because they’re like, “Oh, John Mark’s smart.” People are sharing it because what they’re saying is like, “I feel this way too. This is me.” What happens is you become a voice for them when I talk about meaning or whatever and someone shares that video, what they’re really saying is like, “This is how I feel.” What they’re really doing is sharing themselves. The cool thing is that when you realize that, the videos that 15,000 people share do better than videos that people just look at. It also it’s great for connection and connecting with new people and growing your brand because literally, other people are sharing you. But they’re not sharing you. They’re sharing themselves, but you are the face of it, and so they’re sending your content to their friends.

Apparently, I’ve read, I’m trying to remember where I heard this, but on Instagram for instance, there’s more activity in the DMs than there is even out in public because people are sharing stuff with their friends. I got all kinds of stuff I share with my friends through the DMs. I don’t necessarily share publicly, not because it’s bad or whatever, but it’s just like, “I know these guys are going to think this is funny. This is for them.” But when people share your stuff, your stuff grows and they’re more likely to share it when they see themselves in you and you’re able to say something that they wanted to say and weren’t quite able to say or just hadn’t been able to say that way.

It’s like, by giving them meaning, by helping them articulate the way they feel about something, by simply articulating how I feel about something, then they take it and they share it. And so I guess that’s a perfect example of how when I lean into the meaning, I could spend a ton of money, and I do sometimes, and sometimes it’s frustrating. I film this awesome music video and spent a lot of money on it. It looks cool and people liked it, a lot of people liked it, but those things don’t move the way when I say something that someone else wants to say for themselves. When I lean into the meaning, it makes everything easier. It’s free promotion.

Chris: I love that.

John Mark: It’s sharpening the ax and then spend five minutes chopping down the tree or I can not sharpen the ax. I can not articulate or figure out why it is I feel a certain way, and I could spend all day trying to chop the tree down with a dull ax.

Chris: I just think that’s the artist’s dilemma though. You know what I mean?

John Mark: It is.

Chris: You hear the term magic in a bottle where something goes viral or whatever, and then you’ve got this one-hit wonder where people are like, “Oh man, they just got that one thing. They couldn’t do it on repeat.” I would just say something that’s really interesting about you is of course, you’ve had songs that are bigger than others, but if you really do listen, there’s something really meaningful just in your music alone that you’ve been able to do more than once. You know what I’m saying?

John Mark: Mm-hmm.

Chris: I wonder how that happens. And is that really the thing where you go back to the well and revisit your why, and you can do it again and again and again?

John Mark: Sometimes, yeah. In a lot of ways, it’s like fishing. It’s like the more time you spend on the water, the more likely you are to catch a fish. But some days you go out and you don’t catch anything. It’s like that with ideas. So some of it is just trying to make myself available to write a song or just writing a lot. I write a lot of bad songs, and sometimes it’s sitting around and asking myself all day, what are you doing? Why are you doing it? Why does it matter? How does this make anyone else’s life better?

Honestly, I think there’s a, and this is going to sound a little weird, but sometimes there is a little bit of a good selfishness. Maybe that’s the wrong word, but the reason I know that people need my songs is because I need these conversations that I’m having in music. I imagine there are at least a few more people out there in the world like me. It’s like, there is this idea of writing the song with the door closed at first. I think that’s one reason I’m able to capture meaning is like, what was the old commercial from the ’80s? “I’m not just the hair club for men president, I’m also a client.” I need this music. I need it. But that’s how I know that it should go, is when I write something and I hear them, and I’m like, “I need to say this. I need to hear this. I need this.” Certainly, there’s at least one other person out there who also needs it.

And you don’t have to make as many if you’re making deep connections with people. I got friends all over the industry, and I have some friends who aren’t super famous, but they do really well because they make deep connections with their audience. They’ll make a deep connection with their audience and they’ll play small shows, but those people will spend lots of money on their books and on their merch, and they’ll support them because they believe so deeply in what those artists are doing. They’re able to make deep connections. You don’t have to be as wide if you’re able to go deep. Now deep and wide is what you want.

Chris: Yeah, for sure.

John Mark: You want a deep connection and you want a wide connection. But you don’t have to have two million super fans to make it. You just got to have enough of those people that you may have that deep connection with, if you want to make it. Obviously, you want to do better than make it. But in music, a lot of people don’t make it. It’s really hard.

Chris: Yeah. You’ve been through a long time.

John Mark: Making it’s kind of a big deal. Just making it is a big deal.

Balancing your time

Chris: It is a big deal. There’s a tipping point, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs have something really similar because it is really hard to innovate. It’s like, you can tweak something but it’s hard to do something completely brand new. Plenty of songs have been written, plenty of genres, like some of the genre that you will play around as a folky singer songwriter thing, and then you’ll go to rock and roll. It’s not like there haven’t been rock and roll songs or folk songs written before. But there’s this thing that you were able to sort of tweak, and I think that that’s at the center is the way people feel.

I think entrepreneurs, they’re similar in that way to artists because there’s plenty of coffee shops out there, why is yours different? And there are these things that if you’ve got a pretty clear why, and that is really hard to discover, and that’s why I love that you’re saying you have to spend time in that discovery, and then remembering it and revisiting it is really important. I think artists really, really struggle at times to monetize and to have commercial success at the same time. I think one of the things that would be good for you to talk about is, you do got to make a living. You have made it and at the same time, how do you balance being an artist and being an entrepreneur? How do you balance your time?

John Mark: Yeah. As far as balancing the time, in the music world, we often work in seasons. I have one season where I’m mostly just in the studio, and then I’ll have a season where I’m paying a lot more attention to the business side. Now, you can’t ignore either one ever. Ignore your business for too long, and it might walk away. But there are seasons when I spend more time on it than others. Usually when I do an album, we do a new album, things have changed so much. Now I feel like people are just putting out music constantly. I’m not quite to that point where I can do that. I feel like even the people don’t realize it, I still have album seasons. Even though I might release it over a longer period of time as singles, it’s still like I have this chunk. There’s this moment in time that is represented by this body of work. And I’m doing that.

Those years are usually incredibly busy. I’m gone a lot. I’m traveling a lot. You put it out, we’re touring. They’re usually pretty big financial years, but you’re also making money, but you’re not necessarily spending the time to sit around and think through how you want to do it. Then the year after, it’d be a little bit slower. Like, “Okay, how could we have done this better? How could we have tour better? What worked?” Because with a tour, you book all these shows maybe six to nine months out, and you pick an opener, and you pick a ticket price, and you pick a marketing, how you want to market the tour, and when the singles to come out to make sure people are paying attention, so they actually come to the show. you’re doing all that. And then once it’s go time, it’s like you’re just in it, right?

Chris: Yeah.

John Mark: I also have a lot of help, too. I have a producer who’s helped me produce the music. I have a manager who helps with some of the business stuff as well. Every now and then, me and my manager will sit down and we’ll just list all the ways that we could possibly make money. I’ll say, “All right. Are we doing better or worse in this area than that area? Does this area even exist anymore?” I still have a warehouse full of CDs. And a very small percentage of people still do buy CDs. We still sell a few. Not a significant amount, but we do have some people. But generally that’s basically gone. That’s over. So we’re like, and what are we not doing? Number one, we’ll sit down and look at all the ways we’re talking about the business, ways we’re doing well, ways we can grow, and there’s probably 16 or 17 different ways that we monetize. I mean, I wrote it down.

Chris: You got to read them off.

John Mark: I’m going to read them off because I don’t even know if I can recite them all. We have publishing, performing rights, licensing, micro-licensing, multi-tracks which is like micro-licensing except people can license the stems. If they want to play your song at church or karaoke, if they have a guitar player, they can turn the guitar off, and they can play a guitar.

Chris: Yeah, there you go.

John Mark: Digital streaming platforms. There’s obviously the big ones which are Apple Music and Spotify, but that also includes YouTube. And there’s a bunch of different ones in different territories, different ones in Europe and in South America, and whatnot, the DSPs digital streaming platforms. And then there’s tour, and tour breaks down into ticket sales. We do a pre-show add-on where if people want a little bit deeper experience, they can show up and listen to me talk. They can ask questions. We have the pre-show add-on which is significant because sometimes the ticket sales is really just paying my band and paying the fees and paying all that kind of stuff, and that pre-show sometimes is like, that’s where-

Chris: That’s yours.

John Mark: That’s mine, yeah. But then we sell live merch, sponsorships, all that’s part of tour appearances, internet sales, collaborations, music production. I don’t do so much with music production, but I have in the past where other artists like how I sound, and so I’ll produce songs for them. There’s all sorts of other things. But we have all this kind of stuff going on, so we go through the list and we’re like, there’s three of us. So we sit down and be like, what can we do better? What’s even relevant anymore? And what are we not even thinking of? And then, we try and figure out how all that works with what we’re already doing because what we’re doing is creating meaning, creating connection, and then building community. That’s actually what we’re doing. That’s really the platform that all the business flows out of. That’s the well that the business flows out of. So if that’s healthy, then we can start asking questions about how to do all this.

Cultivating meaning, connection and community

Chris: Can you say that again because I love the three things that you just said?

John Mark: Yeah.

Chris: The three things that you’re doing.

John Mark: What we are doing is we are making meaning, we are making connections, and then we are cultivating community. That’s what we’re doing.

Chris: There’s commonality right there with any entrepreneur.

John Mark: Totally.

Chris: Yeah.

John Mark: Yeah.

Chris: One of the things you’ve done really well in the community side of it, we talked about the meaning, there’s the connections that we can talk about. But ultimately on the creating community, you’ve done a really good job on social media. I’d say you’ve done something pretty meaningful, not just the size of the audience, but the engagement. I just wonder in your mind, what is the role of social media for you?

John Mark: Social media is one way that we connect, and it’s one way we try and foster community. Obviously, if I’m saying things that resonate with people, they’ll share it. And that’s sort of the awareness portion. I didn’t previously exist in their world, and now I do. And so maybe, they’re paying attention. But also, there are people who are already connected, and how do I maintain that relationship? Social media in a lot of ways is how I maintain that relationship. This is almost a joke because it happens so often, but this is so common. I’ll play a show in Chicago and then the next day, literally the next day in the DM, someone’s like, “Man, how come you never come to Chicago?” I’m like, I literally was just there.

Chris: You’re like, “We missed each other.”

John Mark: I know, exactly. You got to maintain that connection, and it happens so often. This person, obviously, he or she, they like what I do enough that they’re obviously paying attention and they’re obviously enough to just go to the DMs and be kind of a jerk, but I appreciate to be like, “How come you never come to my city?” I mean, that’s what you want. You want people who are like, “Can you please come and do your thing for me? Can you please let me buy a ticket to see your show? Can you please let me buy your stuff?” And you’re like, “But I was in your city.” Social media is really about making connections and maintaining connections. And really too, it’s a great place depending on the platform where people get to talk to one another, even in the comments and stuff. The key to community is commonality. The word community comes from the words common and unity. You’re looking for a common place. You foster community by creating common things where people can share things in common or they can argue about things.

Chris: Yeah, for sure.

John Mark: I guess, yeah.

Chris: One of the things that you do as well is if social media is a place for, you can have a one-to-one connection in the DMs, you’ve got a really one-to-many relationship that happens with just you posting and people sharing. And then you’ve got this peer-to-peer aspect as well, and that’s the collection of community. Sales-wise, it’s really hard to get off. Instagram’s made it easier. Some social media platforms have made it easier, some not so much. And there are these things that happen in live events, and it isn’t always that people are going to go follow you on social media and learn everything. What are some of the other ways that you maintain the community and have connections? Is it email lists, cell phone numbers?

John Mark: Yep. It’s always changing and I’m always considering new things and I try and keep up with most of the platforms. One will usually be the one that works the best. And so I’ll put 80% of my social media time on that one and 20% on the others, in case things move and change because it have. I started on MySpace. I remember getting up every morning before I went to work, and I would friend 50 people. I would find people who were following a band that I thought was similar to me, and I’d go and I just friend them. Over time, I’ve rolled all that into, I think I started on Instagram in 2011, maybe.

Chris: They may be having it on TikTok soon.

John Mark: Yeah, I know. But no, I still think from my point of view, the best connection you can have with somebody is an email. Email is still the best. One of my goals as far as maintaining connection, one of my biggest goals is to move people to email. Because also, if one of the big platforms happens to be owned by a foreign entity and the government shuts them down, what are you going to do if you don’t have an email list? Also there are platforms that works really well for me that stopped. What do you do when that happens? One, it’s just great to own your stuff, to know that you own this connection.

Also, I use the platforms. I’m really not against any of the platforms, but those don’t belong. One of the hard things is that we pour a lot of time and money and energy into those, but they don’t really belong to us. They can change the algorithm at any moment, and it doesn’t work anymore. And that’s fine. It’s their prerogative, but it doesn’t affect me as long as I am moving those people over to my email list. One thing I want to do is make the email list itself more meaningful, have things that people look forward to seeing when they open the emails. The other thing is email doesn’t work on an algorithm.

Chris: It’s a transaction.

John Mark: It is. It’s like, boom. I like to send them early in the morning because I feel like most people, first thing they do is they get to work and they look at their email.

Chris: Yeah, yeah.

John Mark: I mean, different people have different strategies as far as when to send an email. But from my perspective, the email is probably the strongest connection I can have with a large group of people. If I can physically be in front of those people, and this is one thing I tell young artists, when they want to know what they can do, what they need to be doing, how can they make it? I think one of the best things you can do as an artist right now is to get in front of live human beings any way that you can. I mean, you have to do the social media thing, but so many people are fighting for that space and they count on going viral to make their career, but you might never go viral. But if you can get in front of human beings, the other thing is if you’re real smart, I see Gary Vee in front of human beings and going viral.

Chris: Oh, yeah.

John Mark: And so I was like, “Young artists, go play. Get in front of people.” I don’t care if it’s five people. I had a friend one time, he wanted to know what he needed to do, and I was like, “You need to do a hundred house shows.” A hundred house shows. And he did it. And he built a little career off of it. He did pretty good. He ended up doing some other stuff. He went into acting or whatever, but he did a hundred house shows. He might be in front of five people in a city. But if you do a hundred shows, that’s a hundred cities where you have five people, and if you’re good, they’re sharing you. And they’re not just sharing you, they’re sharing you from all over the country. They’re not just sharing you from this one city, this one place.

That’s kind of what my wife and I did early on. We sold CDs out of the trunk of our car, literally out of the trunk of our car, and we traveled. We did these little things all over the country, and we made these little connections, and we made these little relationships. A lot of those relationships were actual relationships with actual human beings that we met. And we kept up with a lot of those people. But those people became our biggest advocates. Even to this day, the people we met early on who were there when there was only 10 people, but they loved it. And I know their name, they know my name. Some of them have my texts. I got friends that I just met who were just fans from back in the day, and we keep up. But see, they’re the people who are always sharing your stuff. They’re always supporting you.

Chris: Yeah, they’re champions.

John Mark: If you have a handful of champions in every major market in the United States, that’s an asset. That’s a legit asset that you can build off of instead of sitting around just trying to go viral. I mean, it’s helpful to go viral.

Navigating loneliness in a world of technology

Chris: Yeah, it’s like if you’re hoping for a grand slam, a couple of bases would probably help. One of the things that you’re talking about this connected world, and I think one of the things that I have really thought about with just even this podcast is just how lonely, even in a connected world it can seem or feel being any type of entrepreneur or an artist. And I think that that’s something that you’ve got, I’d say some experience with just from us being friends. I think it’d be good for you to talk about how you’ve dealt with seasons where you were like, “Man, it feels pretty lonely.”

John Mark: Yeah, yeah. It’s really hard. People can, and I don’t blame them, I’ll laugh at them, too, if they make fun of me for saying this. But there is something to your closest friends, you can share your biggest victories and you can share your defeats. But it is difficult. Sometimes you want to celebrate your wins and celebrate your defeats. And when you’ve been successful, sometimes it’s hard to celebrate your wins because other people aren’t as successful, or maybe I’m just self-conscious and it sounds like I’m bragging when really I’m just, “I want to celebrate. I worked real hard, and it turned out great and I’m excited about it.” And then when something doesn’t work out for you, I have so many friends who work really hard and really good at what they do, who haven’t been as successful as me for whatever reason. They’re like, “I don’t want to hear you crying that your show didn’t go very well because at least you’re playing a show.”

Chris: Yeah, so you hold back a little.

John Mark: Maybe this like my ...

Chris: Yeah, but that’s real stuff.

John Mark: This is like, privileged problems, right? Privileged problems. But for real though, a lot of times you’re out there just doing the work on your own. Maybe that’s more what we’re talking about. You’re doing the work on your own. This is real for me. I’ve had this conversation with my wife recently. I built a cool studio in my basement. It looks cool. I like it. It looks like a place I want to be. And I, for the most part, enjoy working there. But I tell my wife, I was like, “I am really tired of sitting in my cool room by myself. I’m really tired of looking at my comic book wall and all my cool instruments and not having anybody else to pick one up.” 20 years ago, 15 years ago, it wasn’t so easy for everyone to just record their part and just send it to you.

Chris: Yeah. You really had to go somewhere.

John Mark: But right around the time of the pandemic, technology had become really good at doing that. Most of my friends already had gear at their house, I think. So we got to where we’re doing a lot of work remote, which sounds really fun. And in one sense, it’s really cool. There’s a saxophone player in Oregon who can play a part and send it to me. There’s an organ player in LA and a drummer in New York. I can use all those people, and that is so fascinating.

Chris: Yeah, it is.

John Mark: Or even people who you wouldn’t have access to before, people who play with the top of the top, if they’re not doing anything, sometimes you can hit them up and be like, “How much for two hours to play a solo on the song?” A lot of times, they’ll just be like, “Yeah, all right.” And they’ll do it. That would’ve been out of reach previously. That would’ve been impossible previously.

Chris: Yeah. You got to fly him somewhere.

John Mark: Exactly. Now, you can do that. But the downside is I’m sitting at home staring at a computer screen all day, and I got into music and songwriting, and all this stuff really because I love the connection. I love singing. That’s when I realized I wanted to do this for a living is the first time I walked out on a stage and heard people singing my words back to me. I was at a big conference, and I walked out and I sang my song and they heard the chorus.

And the second time the chorus came around, the entire crowd was singing this song. I hadn’t recorded it before. I didn’t know it was a thing I could do. And that was it for me. I was like, this feeling, I want to always have access to this feeling, to be able to walk out and do that. The other thing that I love is when you’ve done something really, really hard, and I say this, I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me because I don’t feel sorry for myself, but it’s really, really hard to travel city to city to set up, spend all day setting up to come up with a performance or a show or whatever you want to call it that’s going to be really meaningful and really good, and then get people to actually come out. It’s really hard to do.

And then for them to come out and give them more than they paid for and to know that they’re loving every minute of it, that’s hard to do. I can do that with a team and we go do that, and it feels so good to work so hard, and to feel that feeling. And then, you get on the bus and you crack a beer and everyone looks around and you’re like, “Did we do that? I think we did that. I think we did.” I love it. Those are the two things I love the most because when I talk about meaning, I mean it. But when you see the people’s faces and hear their voices, that meaning that you made is no longer a guess whether or not it matters to them.

Chris: Yeah, it’s live feedback.

John Mark: You’re feeling it. You’re getting live feedback right there. That feeling is priceless. There’s no other feeling like that.

Chris: And the further distance you have from those experiences to sitting in your basement, it eats at you a little bit.

John Mark: Yeah, and it goes back to the why. I’m like, why am I doing this? I can make more money this way. But is this really feeding me? Is it feeding me in a way that’s long-term going to be sustainable? No one wants to be that artist who doesn’t like their own music anymore or that artist who resents their audience. That’s the worst. That’s the worst. When they’ve got to the point where they don’t know that they like it anymore. I feel like I’ve got to love it. And yeah, so it does get lonely sometimes.

I was even telling my manager recently, I was like, I don’t care if we make any money this fall. I mean, I’d like to, it’d be nice. But I miss playing with my band. I just want to book any kind of tour anywhere so that we can just go play. We can just get in front of people and play. It’s been about a year and for a number of reasons, that’s a whole different conversation. But it’s been about a year since I’ve been out on the road with my band. I miss it.

Chris: You’re feeling it.

John Mark: This is a big deal to me, yeah. The loneliness, it gets tough. I feel like this is a big thing for everybody now, though. Technology has given us a lot of access to each other, but it’s also made us lonely because we’re not engaging in that face-to-face kind of world. It also we’re able-

Chris: That we’re designed to do.

John Mark: Exactly. And the vulnerability that endears people to one another is not necessarily possible all the time in a text or in a Zoom call, or whatever. I mean, I appreciate that stuff. Right now, I’m a long way from my family and it’s nice to send a text to my kids and be like, “Love you, miss you.” It’s great.

Chris: There are massive advantages, and done maybe too much, it can be a disadvantage as well.

John Mark: Yeah. But loneliness is also really unhealthy. A friend of mine who says that loneliness is worse for you than cigarettes as far as people don’t live very long when they’re lonely. So that’s something I want to fix, and that’s why it’s a big conversation, I think, for me right now. That’s one of the big things I said earlier this year. I was like, one of my goals is to get in the room with other humans that I know and care about as often as I can this year, because you have to make an effort.

Chris: Absolutely. The thing is, you’ve got this desire and it’s almost like this thing’s building up and you’re like, “I got to get it out. I got to be able to give it that,” and the feedback is important as well.

John Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely.

Chris: Yeah.

John Mark: Yeah.

Evolving with your industry

Chris: One of the things that’s interesting about the industry that you’re in is how much it’s changed and how the adaptations you’ve had to make in order to make money. I just wonder, what did you think the music industry was going to be and what is it now?

John Mark: Yep. It’s changed so much and it continues to change. In the ’80s and ’90s, a lot of the big bands would do one album every three years. I thought you spend a whole year making an album. And then, you spend months marketing it and you spend a year and a half touring it, and then you take a break, and you write the next album. I thought that’s what it was going to be. But that’s changed significantly. The biggest change, there’s two. One thing, technology has changed music for better and worse, which technology is interesting how it does it. It does good and bad things at the same time, almost all the time.

One of the good things is when I first started making music, it’s very expensive to make a good album. It’s very expensive because the technology wasn’t there. You had to rent a big studio and you had to pay. When you were in a big studio, you got to pay at least a couple people just to run the basic things. You have the producer there and you have the band there. If somebody messes up, you got to just record the whole song again.

Now if someone messes up, they play the whole thing, it’s almost perfect, one messes up, it’s just literally we’re going to go in digitally and tweak it. Or even, I was a little bit flat on that, I don’t know. “We’re just going to kick it up a little bit.” Technology has made music way easier to make now. For not a whole lot of money, you can make a professional quality album. Obviously, more money means you have more access to different musicians, you have more time, you can get better tones and stuff. But now, it’s really inexpensive to make albums compared the way it used to be. But the problem is, the same technology has made it really easy for people not to pay you for those albums, right?

Chris: That’s true.

John Mark: It’s like there are more people, and I think it’s a good thing that there are more people who can engage in the ritual of recording music, because you used to have to have a whole lot of money. You didn’t have to have a lot of money to write songs or play songs, but you had to have a lot of money to make a good recording.

Chris: Yeah, something that people wanted to listen to.

John Mark: That’s actually good because there’s a lot more people out there who are able to participate. But the downside is that it’s a lot more difficult to figure out how to pay for those albums, to pay those musicians. In a lot of ways, it’s the musicians who suffer the most. Because as a writer, you own intellectual property. Over time, you have an asset, you can make money off of it, publishing and that kind of thing. But when there’s less money overall, there’s less money to pay the individual musicians, then you’re like, “Well, we could have him in for two days, but I also could just tweak this and we don’t have to.” Or “I could sample the drums and we could ...” There’s all kind of things like that. It’s both positive and negative.

And then, you have the move from CDs to downloads which that was really, looking back was probably prime time for being an independent musician. Because previously, you could make a lot of money selling CDs, but you also had to print the CDs, you had to ship the CDs, you had to sell them. And CDs were sold on consignment like magazines. So if you wanted to have 10 of your CDs on the shelf in every record store in America, it’s going to cost you millions of dollars to be there, just to show up, just in stock. And so when downloads came along, it’s like you didn’t have to do that. It’s like, I can be on the front page of iTunes and not be on a record company. I don’t need a million dollars to have access to millions of people. And that was great. But as that technology progressed, it’s also the same thing that allowed us to participate, also was the same thing that makes it harder to make a living off of the music.

Chris: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s the streaming share and it’s how much in the pool that you can make, and it’s the bigger artists that get the bigger share of the pie.

John Mark: It’s true.

Chris: Yeah.

John Mark: It’s very true.

Chris: Well, that’s really well articulated. That right there is just even talking about that, the level of situational awareness to adapt and to figure out how to keep carry on and carry this sort of, what we started the conversation with. I got to really be close to my why and I got to make sure it’s front and center, and that I haven’t deviated too much. And then, there’s the pressures of life where you’re like, “Man, I need to not only provide, but I want to give my family or my friends the best.” You got to take care of your band, and your people or your employees, and all this kind of stuff.

Prioritizing mental health

One of the things that I want to make sure that we have time for you to really talk about is all of that, all of those wins, the fails, the adaptations, the struggles, there is this, I’m going to say a common thread that I think is a really important one. There’s your physical health, because you got to be able to carry on and do these things, but mental health is one of the things that I think can pay some of the biggest tax or it can take the biggest toll with all of those different things that you’ve had to face with all of the industry changes and all these things. How do you get yourself into a place of mental health? How do you know you’re deviating?

John Mark: I think for me, a lot of it is super basic stuff like exercise, sleep. It’s the super boring things. When I’m not feeling right, when something feels off, I’ve got a checklist that I go through. Usually when something is off, when you’re feeling anxiety, when you’re feeling depressed normally, I mean, it can be a physical thing, it can be a chemical thing. A lot of times there’s a need that’s not being met. The thing is when I was young, you recover so much faster than you do when you’re older. I didn’t have my wisdom teeth taken out when I was young and I was having a little bit of a problem. And so I went to see a dental surgeon and an oral surgeon. And he sat me down and said, “Okay, I just want to make sure you want to do this.”

He got on a whiteboard and he said, “If you’re 18 because your body is still growing, you heal so fast.” He takes the thing, he’s like, “This is you once you’re 18,” and he draws this line. It’s up and down. This is like a hump, right? He’s like, “You’ll be better in a weekend. You’ll be back at work on Monday. You’ll be fine.” He’s like, “But because you’re not still growing anymore, you’re in your 40s,” he’s like, “This is you.” And he just draws it and the line goes so long. He’s like, “It could take you two to three weeks to recover.” There was a point when I had to realize like, I was almost 40 and I was living like I was 25. I was 25, I didn’t have to sleep, because we travel. In music, we always joke that we’re professional travelers who get to play music occasionally, right?

Chris: It’s true.

John Mark McMillan: There’s the travel. The two areas that you are mostly taxed when you’re traveling is it’s sleep and food because food is on the road. And sleep, because you sleep when you can. You try to sleep on the plane, you sleep on the bus. You’re on a big tour and you’re making a lot of money. The bus is not so bad. But if you’re driving city to city, when I was 25, sometimes we would do, we’d get up at the hotel and we would drive eight hours. We would spend two hours loading in, spend two hours sound checking. I would do a VIP thing where people come early, and then the opener would go on and I’d have a minute. And then, we would go on and we’d play a two-hour show and then spend an hour and a half tearing down, and I’d go out to the merch table and meet people.

Then we’d get to the hotel. At that point, it’s 1:00 in the morning, 2:00 in the morning. You get to the hotel, and then you get up and do it again. And we relished it when we were young. But there was a point where I was like, why is my life falling apart? I realized someone had to sit me down and tell me, you realize just because you want to do it and you’re willing to suffer for it does not mean that your body is capable of doing everything that you want to do. You’re going to have to figure out how to minimize and maximize. The things that are hard on you on your body, you’re going to have to learn how to minimize. And the things that you can do that don’t require as much of you physically, you’re going to have to maximize. If you really want to do this well long-term, you’re going to have to get in good health.

But it’s amazing to me how the positive impact just basic health has on my brain, on my mental health. And then there are other things, too. But I started to look at my body as a machine. My body and my mind is a machine that needs maintenance. If something is off, it’s low on oil or I need washer fluid, or I’m out of gas. This is probably my main thing. That, and I just have good people in my life that I talk to. I have people who don’t care about my career, who are not impressed with anything I’ve done and are also not disappointed in me with any of the areas that I feel like I failed.

They’re just people who we can sit around the fire and we can talk, and they’re going to tell me what’s up even if it hurts my feelings. That’s a big part of it, too, is cultivating those relationships. Also, I definitely think therapy is awesome. I have a friend who says, “You’re either in therapy or you’re on your way.” Well, it’s just like you’re a machine. You got to maintain your machine, and a well maintained machine, I’m trying to remember who told me one time, it’s way easier to change the oil than to put a new engine in your car. So I’m always asking myself, and honestly, my work is so much more meaningful when I am taking care of myself.

Chris: Yeah, that’s good.

John Mark: Because my mind is there and I can see it like, “Yeah, this is good.” It’s like, “I know this is good.” I get more done and it’s one of those things. I’m going to spend all day sharpening the ax, so that it’ll only takes me five minutes to chop the tree down, or if I don’t sharpen the ax or if I don’t take care of myself, it’s going to take me all day to chop that tree down.

Chris: Well said, dude.

John Mark: Yeah.

Learning to love the process

Chris: We’ve talked about a lot of stuff. I think it’d be really helpful if you gave a piece of advice to aspiring musicians or entrepreneurs who’s trying to make their way through this, any hyper-competitive industry, what advice would you give?

John Mark: I think that if you learn how to love the process, learn how to love the process, fall in love with doing the work in a good way, not in the ego way, but in a way like learn to enjoy the work. Don’t just look at the outcomes. Number one, because you spend most of your life doing the work, and it’s only a small percentage of your life where you get to celebrate the outcome. Obviously, you want the outcome. My theory is if you love what you do, you will naturally do a better job at it without having to think about it. You just naturally do better because you love it. If you do better, you’re going to have, if you want to call it a product, you’re going to have a better product and people are going to like it more, and they’re going to buy it more.

At the end of the day, if you don’t have the big outcome that you want, you still did something you loved, and that in itself is a win. But if you can learn to fall in love with the process, and for musicians especially, this is incredibly important because if you’re going to be an artist, you’re going to spend a long time not making money. You’re going to spend a long time creating those connections and building that audience. If you try and tap that audience too soon, you’re going to run them off. I mean, I like your song, but I’m not going to spend $20 a month on your Patreon. Man, I like your song, but I’m not going to travel two hours and go see you play in another town just because I like your song.

It takes time to build trust and build those connections with people, and you need to look at it as those relationships are really your biggest asset. But if you don’t love the process, it’s going to be a really, really frustrating journey for you as a musician, as an artist, I think. But I think in any field, if you love what you do and it’s meaningful to you, you’re going to do it better. I have a friend who talks about, he likes to look at a thing and call it an idea. He looked at a restaurant and be like, “Well, that’s an idea,” right?

Chris: Yeah.

John Mark: And you walk in, it’s an idea. You’re like, you’re right. Some very smart person realized there’s a need for this, and so they put this here. But they’re not actually passionate about that thing. And you’ve all been to those places where you walk in and you’re like, this is getting the job done, but no one here cares about it. There are movies that have come out recently that I knew were going to flop, and it’s not because I know much about movies. I’m not going to say what the movie is, but I knew it was going to flop. And I knew because I’m like, you cannot convince me that the director cares about these characters.

Don’t tell me that any of the actors knew they existed or that they read this script and liked it. No one involved on any level is passionate about this group of characters or about this story, and you could tell from the beginning and the movie flopped because nobody really cares. And then certainly there are blockbusters that no one cares about, and they’re doing well, and they’re entertaining. I’m not saying that it’s a rule. There are all kinds of businesses where people just meet a need, and the owner doesn’t love the business, and they do a good job and they make it. But you know when you walk in a coffee shop and you’re like, somebody designed these walls, somebody loved this place. And I love being here because somebody else loved it. That’s not an idea. That’s someone putting some meaning into that business.

There’s a huge business downtown, I don’t know. I don’t like putting other people’s things down. But there’s a business downtown. It was a movie theater, a chain that I think should have really worked. They’re serving food and they had the whole high-end thing. I think someone thought, “Man, this city really needs this type of thing.” And they did it and it failed. I don’t know that it failed because it wasn’t good. You just saw it. It only lasted a few years and each year, the quality went down. You can see they weren’t investing more time and energy into it. It went down, and then they ended up closing the doors. But I’ve been to that same type of thing in other cities where you can tell people obviously love this. Somebody is really passionate or finds meaning in doing this for people. The food is good, the experience is good. One thing is an idea like, “Well, that’s an idea.” But the other thing is something else.

Chris: Man. The thing that strikes me when you’re talking like that is there’s a difference between selling something and offering something. The meaning you’re able to offer something versus you’re looking for a transaction, and both of them can involve money.

John Mark: Yeah. That’s the word, transaction.

Chris: Yeah.

John Mark: And it’s okay. There are a lot of businesses that are just transactions. There’s nothing morally wrong with that. I just feel like if you’re going to spend your life doing something, don’t just make a transaction. But I’m not even saying you need to leave what you do and do something else. I’ve got a really good friend. He played on every major country album in the ’90s. He played with Elton John and Sting. There’s producers who used to call him in. They were working with big bands. I’m not going to say what bands, but you would know if I said their name, huge bands. They would leave and the producer would call him in at night and fix all their parts. And he’d fix them so well that the band didn’t know that he had fixed them.

Chris: Wow.

John Mark: He’s been in the music industry forever, and he said, “There’s a difference in a player and a professional. A player can play the part, but a professional shows up every day and figures out how to fall in love with the song that they’ve played every day for the last six months.” He regularly was a band leader for really huge artists, and he was constantly trying to keep the band motivated in that space. So whatever it is you’re doing, you can figure out how to find meaning in it, I’m pretty convinced. In a lot of ways, it’s an approach. Offering something versus just a transaction.

Chris: Yeah.

John Mark: Yeah.

Chris: Well said, dude. What’s next for John Mark McMillan?

John Mark: What is next? I’m always working on new music. I’ve got a handful of singles. I’ve done some cool collaborations that I’m pretty excited about. I’m working on a whole new album. Most people who know me probably know my songs from the worship music space. I’ve done a lot of other things, but my biggest songs have definitely been in that space. I kind of veered out of it for a little bit and moved more towards an adjacent type of space. But last year was honestly a very difficult year for a number of reasons. My wife had health issues. My dad had a stroke. Her dad was very sick and ended up passing away. It was a difficult year.

But I found myself around the house singing these old school worship choruses. I wasn’t planning on recording any of those. I was actively working on other music. At a point I was like, “These little worship choruses are pleasantly haunting my life.” I was like, “Maybe they need a place to live. Maybe they need a home.” I didn’t think I would do this. I didn’t rule it out, but I really never thought I was going to lean back into worship music. But these little haunting, pleasantly haunting songs were just hanging around us, and I started to feel like they needed a home. So I’m recording a worship album that I’m really excited about. I’m a little nervous because it is leaning back into an area that I haven’t been a part of in a while. I think people are going to like it, though.

Chris: That’s awesome.

John Mark: I think people will like it. A lot of people who followed me for a long time get that that’s part of what I do. It’s so uncool that it’s cool. Something about it is refreshing.

Chris: I mean, I’m sure it’s going to be good.

John Mark: Yeah. So I’m doing that. I’ve got some other big ideas. We’ll see if they’re just ideas or if there was something else.

Chris: Oh, man. Here we go.

John Mark: Yeah.

Chris: I just got to say, I have really enjoyed having you sit in this seat. I’ve wanted to have this conversation with you for a long time. I’ve got a tremendous amount of respect for you as an artist, as a person, as a man. I just appreciate you coming all this way to sit down and talk with us.

John Mark: Man, it’s an honor, seriously. Absolutely.

Rapid fire questions

Chris: All right. Now, for some rapid fire questions with John Mark McMillan.

John Mark: Rapid fire.

Chris: You ready? It’s like somebody knew you when they put these together.

John Mark: Oh, no.

Chris: I don’t know. And it wasn’t me. I’m just for the record. Favorite Bob Dylan song?

John Mark: Oh, my favorite Bob Dylan song. When the Deal Goes Down.

Chris: Okay. What is your favorite city to perform in? This is controversial.

John Mark: It is, because I want every city to think that it’s them. And the truth is, there’s only a couple of cities that I don’t like. I’m not going to say what those cities are.

Chris: For sure.

John Mark: But my favorite city to play in might be Chicago. There’s just something about Chicago people and the way they show up.

Chris: Nice.

John Mark: Yep. But Atlanta would be a close second. Yeah, it’s hard. It’s tough.

Chris: Yeah. Well, I appreciate you not just picking one.

John Mark: Yeah.

Chris: You can choose, I’m going to say this, but just pick one here. Is it Prince or Michael Jackson?

John Mark: Prince.

Chris: Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson.

John Mark: Johnny Cash. But that’s hard.

Chris: I know. Beyonce or Taylor Swift.

John Mark: Beyonce.

Chris: Oh, man. All right. What is one app that you can’t live without on tour?

John Mark: I mean, this is so whatever, but Google Maps, mostly though. I know. Yeah, most people can’t live their lives without Google Maps. But on tour, I remember back in the day when I kept a roll of quarters and we stopped at a pay phone to call and check in, and we used to print maps. In every hotel, if the hotel had a bad computer and you couldn’t print your maps out, you were in big trouble. It’s really nice to know where you’re going. But also, it’s really nice to know where to get a coffee. Back in the day, you didn’t know. You just had to eat a chain restaurant.

Chris: And you had to guess.

John Mark: And you had to guess.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

John Mark: So Google Maps.

Chris: All right, this one’s going to be hard. Favorite Marvel character?

John Mark: Wolverine.

Chris: I knew it.

John Mark: Wolverine.

Chris: All right. If you could wake up tomorrow and have one superpower, just one, what would it be?

John Mark: I like to be invincible. I like to be invincible. And it’s a real heavy answer, but there are bad things happening in the world. It’d be great to just go to those places and just shut people down. “You can’t kill me. You can’t kill me. I’m going to stop this.”

Chris: I want keep going.

John Mark: Stuff I don’t like. I’m going to stop it.

Chris: Man, that would be great. I love that.

John Mark: Yeah, invincibility.

Chris: I mean, that’s the superhero in you. All right. You got three words to describe your morning routine on tour.

John Mark: On tour. Slow, quiet, and bathroom. Sorry. That’s one thing about tour is no matter how nice your bus is, you got to find a nice bathroom.

Chris: Yeah.

John Mark: Yeah.

Chris: I mean, it’s a thing.

John Mark: Yeah, I know. Yeah.

Chris: All right. What is the last business book you read?

John Mark: The last business book, this is going to be controversial because it’s not a business book.

Chris: Okay.

John Mark: But it’s called Story by Robert McKee. It’s actually about screenwriting. But Story is so deep in human beings. I learned so much about people from that screenwriting book. I don’t plan on ever writing a screenplay. But the depth to which Story is in us as human beings, it’s almost to the point where you could say that a person is really a story with a body. And in business, I think understanding that is a big deal in business. The better you understand how to tell a story, the better you’re going to be at whatever it is that you’re doing.

Chris: Love it. Calling or texting?

John Mark: Calling.

Chris: What is one hidden talent that your fans would be surprised to know that you had?

John Mark: One hidden talent. One hidden talent. I don’t know that I have a lot of talent.

Chris:

You’re like, well, I sort of put it on display. That’s my hidden talent. Is there an instrument that you play that nobody knows?

John Mark: I don’t know. I’m drawing a blank. I feel like there should be something.

Chris: Something remarkable.

John Mark: Something remarkable, something fun and exciting, and interesting to say. Hidden talent.

Chris: You’re like, “I can cook.”

John Mark: I’m terrible at cooking. My wife is so good, though. It’s sort of like, I tried it and it’s so bad. There’s no room for me to grow. There’s no room for me to grow because I can’t even get up to average for her.

Chris: Oh, my gosh.

John Mark: I’m really good at figuring out how to get airline miles out of every situation.

Chris: Dude, you had to go back and get that. That’s really good.

John Mark: That’s the kind of stuff I care about. I’m so nerdy about air miles. I’m like, “Let’s get more miles.”

Chris: “I’m going to take that second leg to get another PQP.”

John Mark: Exactly.

Chris: All I have to say is it was awesome to have you out here to have this conversation, to hear the things expressed the way that you look at the world, and I’m just excited to have you.

John Mark: Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.

Chris: Until next time.

John Mark: It was seriously an honor and so much fun.