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The Tracks Nobody Sees, But Every Marketer Should Hear.
This podcast celebrates the hidden gems of marketing insight found across all professions—both within and beyond traditional marketing roles. Just as B-sides on a single contain brilliant tracks that are treasured by true fans, every profession contains marketing wisdom that isn't obvious at first glance but is incredibly valuable when discovered.
Tom Hootman (00:05)
Hey everybody. I'm Tom, Tom Hootman, and welcome to another episode of The Marketing B-Sides. This is for the uninitiated a podcast where every single one of us is a marketer, but at the same time, we drop our armor when we walk in. We lower our shields, and we acknowledge that not a single one of us has anything figured out.
I say this every week, but this is an interesting one this week. I can legitimately say I don't get nervous recording these because all I'm doing is chatting with people. but this is only like the second or third time I've been bit of butterflies heading into the conversation.
Today's guest is Mark Cross. You may know Mark Cross as on Instagram or TikTok or anywhere else on a social platform as SVP of global brands. He has a huge following that he's cultivated and grown himself of over a 100k followers. And I love the way that his feed generally approaches the hellscape that is corporate life.
The empathy with which we should approach life that we don't, a dash of politics, but not much. And just a general hilarious individual. We went way over and I felt like we could have kept going for another two hours on this conversation
So all these things came together where I started following him, started really interacting with his content because it's fucking brilliant and hilarious.
And then I noticed he had a bunch of Notre Dame stuff on the wall. And I'm in Indiana. I'm a huge Notre Dame fan. I'm from South Bend. and then he mentions Concord Mall, which is in Elkart, Indiana. And I'm like, wait a minute, this is a guy who's lived in my backyard. We l we were neighbors for a while. And took a a flyer and just DM'd him. And I will say, like, one of the most impressive things was that he responded within a few hours and was like, let's do it.
He's recently stepped out on his own to really just focus on being a creator, which is amazing. we talk a little bit about career stress, career path. What I love is that the career path is different and we acknowledge that it's different and it doesn't have to be traditional, and you can do your own thing. we also talk about working for for-profit versus nonprofits, startup life, which is its own fucked up thing. and most importantly,
I love how Mark with SVP of Global Brands approaches empathy in the workplace and acknowledging employees as human beings the great example being people have to go to the dentist and the dentist is only open Monday through Friday. And letting people have the autonomy and freedom to live their lives and take care of the things that they have to do without fear of repercussion is important. There's a lot of companies out there that
dont see life that way. so it's an amazing episode. I can't thank Mark enough for not only giving me time, giving me more time and becoming a fast friend. I think he's a phenomenal individual. And to meet someone who's a phenomenal individual, and then on top of it is also fucking hilarious, is a rarity. So thank you, Mark. I appreciate it. I hope you enjoy this episode. As always.
You know what to do. Tell me what you hate. Tell me what you love. Tell me something though. You have a voice. Fucking use it. Enjoy.
Tom Hootman (03:03)
How's it going?
Mark Cross (03:04)
Great man. How about yourself?
Tom Hootman (03:05)
Doing really well. I know that background. I've seen that before.
Mark Cross (03:08)
You're getting a peek behind the scenes. I'm seeing
Tom Hootman (03:10)
Yeah.
Mark Cross (03:11)
yours for the first time. I was listening to the podcast on Spotify, so I didn't get the visuals. You were describing that you were a Notre Dame fan, so I was excited to see what your background was gonna be when I hopped on here.
Tom Hootman (03:21)
Well, it's funny because you're wearing a home field apparel shirt on a bunch of your shows.
Mark Cross (03:25)
I've got so many messages I want to get over to Connor. So I love that brand. I know.
Tom Hootman (03:29)
He was the l he was the last guest. He was great.
Mark Cross (03:33)
I was listening to it. Loved it, by the way.
Tom Hootman (03:35)
Usually people, it's pretty easy to crack open like what they're into outside of what they do. Everything he talked about was college football. He is a man on the mission every single day.
it's his world, it's his life, which is awesome.
Mark Cross (03:45)
There is like obviously I'm a college football fan. My wife went to IU. She is one of like the few Indiana University football fans that existed before two years ago. I went to a small college in Indiana called Wabash College. That's my biggest beef to pick with Connor, is that they've removed their Wabash merch, probably because no one buys it. This school is so incredibly small.
But I still have my Wabash Always Fights shirt that I bought from Homefield like a decade ago because they were the first brand that had Wabash and you mentioned it on the podcast, but they are classic. I'm obsessed. I have a sneakers channel, very few people know about. I also talk about like sports brand marketing on there. I'm obsessed with classic college football themes, branding logos, and they are just so connected to it. I love everything that they do.
Tom Hootman (04:32)
It's really
cool. We we talked about UniWatch, which was like a blog I used to read and he immediately was like, Yeah, Paul Lucas. And I was like, Paul, yes,
Mark Cross (04:38)
yeah.
Tom Hootman (04:38)
this is fucking crazy, dude. I know Wabash. When I first got into digital marketing in 2011, the CEO of the agency here in Bloomington, Hannapin, Pat East, was a Wabash grad. Huge
Mark Cross (04:49)
Yeah.
Tom Hootman (04:50)
Wabash guy, was constantly referring he was really still involved with the university and
would filter people back into us. And then we hired Lauren on our team who was a DePaw grad. So then I learned about the Monon Bell and that heated, hated rivalry every single
Mark Cross (05:04)
Yeah.
Tom Hootman (05:05)
year. And I was like, there's like eight people at each school. Can we stop taking up this marketing meeting talking about Wabash DePaw football?
I graduated high school in 94. So I think I'm a little older. I'm 49, so you're 43.
Mark Cross (05:15)
Yeah.
Tom Hootman (05:16)
So I moved to Bloomington in 96. I didn't go to IU. I just everyone I liked who I thought was hilarious came to IU. And then I met my wife, who was in a master's program here, and we just never left.
Mark Cross (05:27)
Where'd you go to school?
Tom Hootman (05:29)
Indiana Wesleyan
Mark Cross (05:30)
Okay.
Where do the Notre Dame roots come from for you?
Tom Hootman (05:32)
Born and raised in South Bend.
Mark Cross (05:34)
okay. Where'd Okay.
Tom Hootman (05:35)
Penn.
Did you go to like back when it was two still two schools? It was Elkhart Memorial. Were you in Elkhart or were you in
Mark Cross (05:42)
Concord.
Tom Hootman (05:42)
Concord, Sean Kemp country?
Mark Cross (05:44)
Yeah, we moved in 88. My dad is from upstate New York. He never went to college, but his cousin went to Notre Dame and his five kids did. And so my dad just adopted Notre Dame, like a true subway alum. He got into manufactured housing. So I was born in Pennsylvania. We moved around a lot when I was younger, but as you know, the manufactured housing and RV capital of the world in northern Indiana.
We moved there from Arizona in 1988. My dad was the biggest Notre Dame fan in the world. He had the opportunity to move to Elkart or to California. And my mom was like, so we're gonna move to California. And my dad was like, we are moving to South Bend, Indiana.
So we moved in 88. They won the national championship. There were 40,000 people at the Hoosier Dome. I was seven years old, I think, six, seven years old. That's still the largest basketball game, attended basketball game in high school basketball history. That game, the year after Kemp left.
I was all in on Notre Dame and Notre Dame everything.
Tom Hootman (06:39)
if you're ever going to a Notre Dame game, shoot me a line, man. We'll do some tailgating.
Mark Cross (06:43)
All right. I try to make one every year. It's been a little bit difficult since COVID, but I went to Atlanta for the national championship. We didn't end up getting tickets. That's a whole story. But yeah,
trying to get back for one every year. So yeah, we'll definitely
have to stay in touch.
Tom Hootman (06:56)
The segue here is now that you've stepped into the creator life full time, do you have more schedule flexibility now? Or is your life actually busier because you're pumping out content constantly?
Mark Cross (07:07)
Yeah. it's flexible, but like it wasn't my old life that I was leaving was not inflexible. It was remote tech work and I was really good about my schedule of just like devoting the time I needed to for myself. Three or four years ago, I was in the middle of a startup that was growing huge.
I was up at four AM. I was in the office at five. I'd try to make it home by six for dinner. After we put the kids to bed, I'd open up my laptop and work until midnight. And I was doing that for like two years, killing myself with it. And had learned some hard lessons to like give myself some space and make sure to keep work at work. So I think I was doing a pretty good job of that.
And so now it is very flexible, but even today, like the business officially launched on Monday. I've got five booked calls today. And I just realized leaving one of them before this, I was like, man, I gotta put out some content. So right now it's very flexible. And I'm like, yeah, I can do anything I want. Call me in like a week and see how see how flexible everything is because I feel like it's about to get piled on, which I'm ready for.
Tom Hootman (08:12)
I actually pulled up SVP of Global Brands. SVP of Global Brands, by the way, is a great brand, right? Identity. And an hour and ago, maybe, and I was like, Jesus Christ, three new posts since I last looked. And because my agency does influencer management. We've done influencer management for enterprise brands in my previous agency.
It's similar to the, I call it the fake email job. it must be nice to work remote and just tickety tackity, tickety tackity. Like it's just a different type of machine grinding your soul up. There is this like, it must be nice to be a creator. It's like that's hard work. It does
Mark Cross (08:41)
It's
Tom Hootman (08:41)
become hard work.
Mark Cross (08:42)
I do want to like be honest about it. Coal miners have a hard job. Like there's people working at McDonald's who physically work much harder. But you're correct in that if somebody's listening to this podcast or they're just like out into the world trying to explore a way that they can work full-time with benefits and do a job that they absolutely love, but it's not hard.
And you don't think about it and it's not stressful and you get paid a lot of money. Like, I want to just ruin everyone's concept of that. That doesn't exist. Like, unless you're like a Nepo baby, like if you're if your father owned and operated a South African diamond mine, that's a reality for you. If you can't check that box, then brother, I got some bad news.
And so, like with being a creator, there is hardships and there's stress and it is time consuming. And just incredible anxiety about like where is the next paycheck gonna come from. We've got insurance benefits, we have to figure all of this out. Like, there's sleepless nights around that kind of stuff, but there are sleepless nights around.
I just got warned that I'm gonna get fired from my job and they can't even tell me what I'm doing wrong. they just let three of my colleagues go and I've got to pick up their slack, but I'm not gonna get any more money, or I've gotta cover everybody's shifts at the restaurant, or like I don't know how to get from server to hostess, right? Like you talk to any person in any profession, there's shit about it that they hate and they don't like and
wherever you're going to, the fallacy here is that like whatever the thing is that you're going to do next is you're not going to have that. Like maybe you don't have those specific problems, but you will have problems and you'll have things that you worry about and things that you overcome. It's just like where do you want to invest your time and effort and and energy and mental capacity to solve those problems? That's what you're choosing between when you're choosing these careers.
Now as you know, I would say 50% content creation and 50% social media consulting, growth consulting, there are great parts to that and there are tricky things to it. And I just really love the challenges of the things that are hard about it.
Tom Hootman (10:50)
Yeah. The growth consulting fascinates me because do brands, companies bring you in to help find their voice? Do you find that they're spraying and praying? Or is this like we've never done anything in social media? Do they like your voice? They see your voice and they're like, This is similar to what we want to have, something that's honest, transparent?
Or they like help us figure out the internet, sir.
Mark Cross (11:12)
It's more of the latter and that people aren't coming to me with a clear vision. You know, the industry that I just left and I spent 10 years in nonprofit tech and loved working a remote job in tech for all the reasons that people like to. I really enjoyed working with nonprofits because they have a mission at the center of the work that they do, and I'm really can personally connected to those missions. The
Challenge with working with nonprofits is that they are saddled with a lot of constraints that for-profit companies are not. There's a great TED talk that's now like 15 years old that talks about something called the overhead myth, where we judge nonprofits about how they spend their money, which is just a terrible way to do things. We don't do that on the for-profit side. And the outcomes from that mean that
They don't always get the best talent and they don't have the best technology and tools and are not up to speed on all of these, best ways of doing things. And that really played out at the last company that I was working for. We were doing text message fundraising. And a lot of it came from the political side. And then I was growing the nonprofit side. And the political side was fascinating in that the sales conversations that we had on that side were agencies that would show up and say, this is our candidate.
Here's when we're launching. What does your company do through text message fundraising that your competitors don't? And how much does it cost? And somebody would give the pitch and then they would send an order form. It was wild. It was like a you know 30, 45 minute close and super efficient. And then we would get nonprofits on the phone and they would say like, just the basic questions about what kind of text message fundraising are you doing today? What software are you using?
And I had colleagues on the political side who would say, like, I was unprepared for like how little they knew about this whole world. And so a lot of my customers and what I'm doing with the new company is still focusing on nonprofits because I love that space and socially minded small businesses, small businesses that are trying to sell something but also trying to give back in some way. And what I find with those companies on social media is
They don't have a clear vision of even what they're trying to do. And so if they're reaching out right now, it's like, hey, Mark, I've seen your content. I like your style. You said you're helping nonprofits on social. We're a nonprofit. We're on social media. We need help. And that's how it begins.
Tom Hootman (13:26)
Yeah. That's probably the best question. Like, you do this, we are on this, we need help. Can you help us?
Mark Cross (13:32)
Yeah, that's a perfect way to start the conversation. And honestly, if you're speaking with a vendor in any capacity as your business or you're, someone who's going to procure services or products from another company, we often don't start at the top of those conversations of like, what are you trying to do? A lot of times we jump right into the middle of the conversation about like, what does it cost? And how do we get this up and running?
When in reality it's really helpful at the beginning of a conversation, any sales conversation, to just align on like, well, what are you trying to do here?
Tom Hootman (14:03)
Yeah, it's funny. specifically for RFPs, I try to give as much positive feedback as I can to RFPs that are run really well. And there's an element of being in new biz and in discovery calls for 15 years where you you can tell after a discovery call which ones you should be excited about and which ones you can still be tentatively excited about. And it's where they start.
Some prospects come in and you can tell they want to prove that they're smarter than you. And like, we're just trying to help you. Like it's not a contest. And then there are others that this is a money machine, right? If I put a dollar in, how many dollars am I gonna get out? Like I don't know what to tell you. And you know the people who come in who will understand how the process works and
they get it. And those are the ones you get most excited about. those are usually the ones that everyone goes past their their deadline. No one, every lead in the CRM, you pop in and be like, let's change that to September 20th. But they understand even then to check in and be like, hey, understand we're going past deadline, but just FYI, it's all good. And then the the ones that disappear are the ones that kind of don't know what to do.
And it's like there's something they're trying to figure out, which we knew from day one when we look back at it.
Mark Cross (15:05)
Yeah. I worked for a startup once where one of the investors came in and gave some really sage advice, which if you've ever worked with startup investors, is a rare occasion because most of them are just filled with some bullshit. You got lucky on something once, you got a ton of money, and now you invest in companies and they want to give you all this guidance and it's like Cool man, sounds good.
Tom Hootman (15:25)
Peace.
Mark Cross (15:26)
But this guy was really great and he said,
If you want to find your target market and you really want to find out about it, he was like, It should seem easy, and it should seem easy for them and for you. If you find yourself like you've got to struggle and dig super deep to get them on the phone the first time, and then you've got to go above and beyond to coax them to get back on the phone the second time and do a demo and then
By God, if you get a contract over the line, the customer success team is just like, it is pulling teeth every day to get them to do anything on the platform. He was like, That's not your ideal customer. The most successful companies and the the people that are finding their ideal customer right away, people are maybe not beating down the door, but they're knocking on the door, just to say, like, hey, what's up with you? And then they hear what you have to say and they send you the follow-up email. And then they're like, When can we get started? And when can we get going?
His whole point was as soon as you start to push the bounds of like it feels like we have to coax people to do this thing, he's like, you're butting up the edge of your target market. So either that's the limit or you need to find different customers or different personas to reach out to because it's gonna feel much more natural for the people who are a perfect fit for your products and services.
I know I've continued to take that with me. And one of the things that I see, especially in 2026, but it's probably been this way in tech for 10, 20 years, investors expect you to push past that level. And it's it's hard because people have growth expectations for you to grow beyond your ideal customer market without taking it into consideration, hey, if we want to push through into this other niche, this other category, we've got to improve the product.
And we've gotta hire more people. But they just wanna do that. They just wanna sell the thing they've already got to the new audience without understanding that like you're going outside of that target market.
Tom Hootman (17:18)
Was there a moment when you woke up and looked at your phone and you were like, holy shit.
Like did it blow up overnight or was it like a gradual? 'Cause I was scrolling back through your your history and like you have a ton of really good engagement. you've had some serious momentum for what seems like a while now, to me at least.
Mark Cross (17:32)
Yeah, it's funny. It does feel kind of sudden in some ways. But I actually did a post on this the other day and it was kind of reflecting back of like, if I consider myself a content creator, like what was the moment that I started really doing it? And I joked about like I had some sick away messages on AIM back in college that I was really proud of.
And like GIFS in my email signature and stuff. but I think it was like 15 years ago. I created an account on Instagram. It was called Pizza Annapolis. It's still, it's still up in living somewhere. I was in Indianapolis and I used to make pizza all the time. And so I created an account just showing off my pizza. And I think that was like the first like social media content creation. That was 15 years ago. And I just did it for fun.
I did one around like weight loss for a time. Then I put the weight back on. I was like, probably not the time to talk about weight loss. and then when COVID hit, A younger colleague was telling me about TikTok. And I was like, Isn't it just like kids dancing? And he was like, No, there's funny stuff on there. So went on there, and that's when I created
my first couple of videos. And it was probably one of my first 10 or 20 videos. I made a video with our youngest who at the time she was in newborn. She was like one or two months old. And my video was me holding her. And I said, For any parents out there who are having difficulty with their kids sleeping through the night and that they're awake all night, but they're asleep during the day, I've got one hack for you. And that's don't have kids because I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.
And that Was the moment where I was like, my whole life, people have been telling me, like, you're funny, you should do something about this. There was one guy I worked with like 20 years ago. His name was Larry. He was the most supportive guy I've ever met in my life. He was like, you're wasting your life away in this office. He's like, go do something. He's like, my wife makes videos on YouTube about Boflex and people send her stuff all the time. You could do that.
And I was like, this guy is crazy. Like, what the hell are you talking about, Larry? Prescient. I don't know where that guy is, but he knew what was going on. And that video was the moment that it clicked. What was weird though is I just kind of kept creating the content to make me laugh. Had a few videos go viral. About four years later, I got up to 10,000 followers where I could finally join the creator rewards program. And I was like, man, I can make some money on this.
So for anybody who doesn't know on TikTok, if you have over 10,000 followers, you can sign up to be part of their creator rewards program and they pay for any video that gets more than a thousand views. they'll pay a flat fee for every thousand. So that RPM limit. they had just changed the rules though after I joined that the video had to be over a minute long. And that wasn't my style. All my videos were 10, 15 seconds. And so nothing was getting monitored.
Every time I tried to make everything anything over a minute long, it just like wasn't working.
kept kind of creating videos, but just like nothing coming of it until about two years ago, where I had some longer videos go viral. And I was like, okay, I think I can do something here. I saw a few really small tips from some other creators that helped me connect the stuff that I was doing on social with my business background.
So
all the stuff that I had learned in these startups about like the big thing was like personas. And again, anybody listening to a marketing podcast knows, right? Like your Tam Sam Psalm and your personas within there and the jobs, pains, and gains of your customers. And are you delivering a value proposition that's helping to address those jobs, pains, and gains? And started to refine the content.
I remember I made a couple of videos. There was one in particular that I've reposted a version of it a few times, but it's just like a two-hand skit of myself saying, like, hey, how was your Christmas? I was it was fine. I'm just here because the ceiling fan broke. And
Like that quick clip resonated. And I realized like people being tired of corporate America was resonating so much. And I had a colleague at the time who was like, that's it. He had seen my content for six years. And he was like, this is it. This is your
Tom Hootman (21:28)
This is this is like
Mark Cross (21:32)
lane. This is your niche. So that was one pivotal moment. And this was all on TikTok. And the other thing was a there's a I have to shout out a great content creator. Her name is Lana.
And she calls herself a TikTok coach. She gave a tip that was go to your profile and sort most popular to least popular videos. And so I did that. And I took a look at the style of content I was creating. And literally what I found was all my viral videos were me just slightly looking off screen. It's like two hand or skit, or I'm pretending to talk to my kids. But I was never creating that content. That was like once a month, once a quarter, maybe.
Tom Hootman (22:08)
The light bulb goes off.
Mark Cross (22:10)
And I just start creating content where I'm looking slightly off screen. And when I tell you straight arrow up and to the right immediately. And then the other thing that I did was take the videos that had performed really well. I downloaded them from TikTok. I went on Instagram and I just reposted them to Instagram.
It took four months. It took six years to get a hundred thousand followers on TikTok. It took four months to get a hundred thousand followers on Instagram. And then I surpassed TikTok on Instagram like two months ago. And everything prior to that, I told my wife, like, hey, I think I could do this for a living. Like I could get paid for this. And at that time I was making nothing. Her response was like, That's great, Mark.
like you got to do the dishes, somebody's gonna do bath for Rosie. like tell me when the checks are coming in. Then we'll talk about it. And then they do start coming in. And that's when you start to like feed into the delusions of like, maybe I could. Maybe I could do this full time. And so my goal honestly was to quit at the end of the year and do it full time. And I was like, I'm gonna give myself this year to ramp it up. I'm gonna take this job for the benefits, give everything I have into it.
But this isn't my career for the long term. That ended and I had a choice to make. Like, do I go back into the corporate world, take a job again for the benefits when in reality my heart's not in it, or go full time into content creation, and that's what I decided to do. So now we're here.
Tom Hootman (23:29)
that's fantastic. I love the four months after four years because I mean, I found you on Instagram and then I started bopping around to see where else that's what everyone does. They see, well, and they start running into you, the algorithms start talking to each other. And I was like, holy shit, man, he's on everything. I also think that coming from a large corporate environment and having worked in publicly traded companies and large global
agencies and like anytime there's more than a few hundred people together, that darkness, that dark, dark humor, gallows humor resonate because you may you've had a a few videos on like Slack, right? Like the shit people say. And Slack is like the wild west sometimes in a company. Like if this fucking fuck doesn't shut the fuck up, I'm gonna and it's it's that it's the Midwest sarcastic snap.
I literally laughed out loud at the end of one of your videos today. I was like, enjoy the rest of your life, you rat prick.
Mark Cross (24:20)
I gotta give credit to my old colleague Ben, who used to call people rat pricks all the time. And it's still anytime I hear that phrase, I laugh. But the the Slack stuff is real in that like we used to have these conversations over Slack and it was a startup y environment. And I remember saying to a colleague, there's the Netflix documentary about Enron, smartest guys in the room. Have you ever seen that?
Tom Hootman (24:44)
Great documentary.
Great documentary.
Mark Cross (24:46)
There's a classic scene in there that came out after the fall of Enron. And it's two traders talking about fuel prices in California. And one of them is joking, like, we're gonna jack up the rates on Granny out in Oakland, and they're cackling about it. And when you see that, you're like, these guys are fucking monsters.
But we're working at this company and we're working with nonprofits. And I'm not going to tell you the shit that was said behind the scenes. But like anybody who works in at a corporate office job who uses Slack knows that you make jokes that you wouldn't want to come out on a Netflix documentary. And so it's always so funny to me to think about like, guys, what if this shit, like, what if you had to show up in front of Congress and articulate and like succession did that great, like that.
Congressional team where they have to that is not
Tom Hootman (25:37)
You gotta if you
wanna make a Tomlet you're gonna have to break some Greg's. It was one of my favorites.
Mark Cross (25:43)
The reason that that stuff works is because it's not satire, in that that is it's maybe not to the maleficent degree that it is in portrayed in television and movies.
And it's been great to just say that stuff out loud because people see it if you go into the comments, there are so many people who are like, hey, where'd you get this recording of our meeting? Or where'd you get this recording of? And it's like, brother, I've been there. I didn't make this up. I didn't watch your thing and make this. Like this comes from my lived experience where you're in a town hall and you're slacking to someone like, can this fucking guy hear himself?
Can you like literally hear the words that he himself is saying? Cause like, what like I know you the what the fuck? That that experience is universal in the working world. And I think that's what resonates so much with it. And it's been so fun to take the stuff that I joked about for years and years and years at work with my colleagues to now just like make skits about that. And I have former colleagues that will send me stuff and be like, hey, is this from the time and the put? And I'm like, yeah, that's it.
Tom Hootman (26:47)
Yeah,
that's exactly Remember that asshole? Yeah, exactly.
Mark Cross (26:49)
Yeah.
Tom Hootman (26:50)
You mentioned like people in the comments. When you have that much engagement, I'm always fascinated by like the positive comments, and then the randoms and the haters. Like how do you balance do you stay out of the back alleys and gutters of the comment sections or do you just run head on into them?
Mark Cross (27:04)
I can't stay out of the comments. I mentioned, a year ago some post started to take off. I I was doing political content and it was performing really well and I had to stop because the discourse is so toxic. And every once in a while I'll post some political stuff. It's great now in that my audience is pretty politically aligned. And so if I mention something political in a video, I don't have to do much work. the audience will just come in if they'll say, like, hey man, stick to the corporate joke, stay out of politics.
What I want to tell that person is like, bye, Felicia, like, fuck off. I don't even have to say it. There's twenty-six people who are gonna comment before I even see it, and they're gonna say exactly what I'm gonna say, and that has been great. But I couldn't do political commentary day in and day out I talked to a creator this morning who was asking for some advice and she talks politics. And I was I'm jealous of you. Like it would severely impact my mental health. I would say now
10% of comments right off the rip from any video are the people who watch all of my stuff I recognize the names and we now have inside jokes from people I've never met on the internet. You know, this is wild. I've never met these people. Sometimes I don't even
Tom Hootman (28:03)
Awesome. It's community.
Mark Cross (28:04)
know their gender or their age. Like it's just like a handle that's nonsensical. They've posted no videos. Their profile picture isn't of themselves. So like I don't even know who these people are, but I do know the cadence of the comments and
we have a whole thing going on, which is beautiful and kind of awesome. The majority of the comments are overwhelmingly positive. I've been doing more stand-up comedy I consider a lot of the negative comments my like crowd work. I don't think people realize this. It's one of the things that's really helped me on Instagram because on TikTok, you can make a great comment on a video. And I've had some comments
That I've put on other people's videos and they get like 300,000 likes. that doesn't do anything for you on TikTok. Nobody clicks on your profile. They're just like, this is a funny comment that you made. But on Instagram, if you're meta verified, your blue check mark does a lot for you that people I don't think realize. One of the things that it does is that it prioritizes your comments on other videos. It'll move them to the top, it'll give you more visibility.
As a creator, you get notified when someone who has meta-verified comments on your videos, and there's actually a whole activities tab where you can see that. So those get priorities. The other thing that happens, and this is natural, if you're on Instagram, you probably notice it, which is like when you see a funny comment and it's a name you don't recognize, and they have the blue verified check, you click on their profile. So what happens is when I leave a really funny comment on someone else's video, they click on my name and they see that I have
at first it was 70,000 followers or 80,000 followers. And then you're like, this is a funny person. They made this comment that's funny. I can see their content. It is funny. Now I'm gonna follow them. That is a stream to followers that you can't really take advantage on TikTok that you can on Instagram. And I've had so many people who have commented, like, I got to your page because of this comment that you left on another video.
Tom Hootman (29:53)
Yeah, you're right. The rabbit hole. I've done that. Now that
Mark Cross (29:53)
And
there was one in particular, it was a guy who had souped up the engine on this little child's toy like power wheels thing. It was like this little tiny pink power wheels, and this guy's whipping around at like 40 miles an hour through these backwoods, having the time of his life. And I leave a comment that just says, Man, I don't have the healthcare to be tootin around like this.
That video got like 10 million likes. My comment got like 1.5 million likes. You only need a small fraction of those people to be like, hey, that's a funny comment. Let me click on this thing and come over to this page. And I think that's one of the weird things that has helped the growth. And so I know your question was about my comment section, what the mix is there. I love being in the comment section of not only I own videos, I comment like if people are commenting, I'm trying to be in there as much as I can to respond.
Reply to them and comment on them, but I'm also doing that on other videos of similar content creators, knowing that that's a pathway to how people find me.
Tom Hootman (30:49)
Yeah, well Larry was right, 'cause you're fucking brilliant and I can tell you've been working on crowd work. I don't have the healthcare to be tootin' around like that. It's good iambic pentameter.
Mark Cross (30:57)
Hi
Tom Hootman (30:57)
did you start this and be like, I want to do stand up or did you do stand up before and this is an outbranch that? Like where did stand up come from? 'Cause you've had a just a clips of you doing like open mic nights and doing some stand up where you're at now.
Mark Cross (31:07)
Yeah, That was a dream of mine my whole life. Like if you would have asked me when I was fourteen or fifteen, like, what do you want to do? What do you want your career to be? I would have said, I want to do stand-up. I want to go to Chicago and do Second City. And then I want to be on Saturday Night Live. And my hero was Chris Farley. And that was my dream. I did stand up once in college and I never got up again.
You know, you go into the corporate world and you convince yourself you're gonna make a ton of money that way and be really successful and takes you 20 years to figure out that you probably wasted your time. But the stand-up came from a conversation with a talent agency, a big talent agency had reached out about four months ago, big in the world of creators, which was new to me. Like I knew there was talent representation obviously across you know television film
I did not realize that like content creators now there is a whole category of agency representation for content creators. And so this creator agency reached out, and we were chatting and it really fueled my delusion. And I even said to them a few times, like, hey, don't bullshit me here. Like, I think I can do this full time, but if I can't, like, please let me know. The dissuade me from this. And they were like, no, you know, here are some examples of people we represent.
Here's where their account started. They had fewer followers than you do. Here's where they are now. They're pulling in 70 grand a month from brand deals. And I'm like, what the heck? Like, what? we kept chatting and they sent an agreement. And buried within that agreement was that they would have say over my content. And I clarified do you mean the branded content for the deals that you bring? And they were like, No, we would have creative control over everything.
And they said, and I do believe that they were like, We don't want to censor you, but they did say, if you want to make this your full time career, you have to be more appealing to brands.
Tom Hootman (32:44)
You can't go full Kanye.
Mark Cross (32:45)
Exactly.
Tom Hootman (32:47)
that's taking control out of your hands, right? Like
Mark Cross (32:49)
But there was another guy who had joined the call, and he said, you know, we have a lot of creators who are funny and they have controversial takes and they do stand up. And the more controversial stuff they do on stage and the brand safe stuff they do on their channel. And I was like, okay, a good idea. And then I was like, honestly, a good, segue to get back into standup. This is something I've wanted to do my whole life.
I'm comfortable in front of the camera. I've been bombing on sales calls on Zoom for 10 years, talking to an empty room. You think of crowd that's not laughing at me as scary? Try five executives at the American Heart Association, cameras off, mics off, and you're cracking some fucking joke and you get crickets? That is bombing. And so, like, I'm not scared of this crowd, so I'll get up here and do it and
it went really well the first time and I caught the bug for it. I've been doing it four months now here in Charleston. I go every Monday just to do it. It's great in that it's real-time feedback. The algorithm will tell you three days later what worked. On stage, you in 10 seconds you know if it's good or bad. And so it's been a cool creative outlet for me.
Tom Hootman (33:56)
Yeah. You mentioned Second City, I think, and you're comfortable in front of a camera? Were you in drama like in school?
Mark Cross (34:01)
Yeah.
I played football, but I also was on stage. I did bit parts in the sound of music and some of the other stuff there. I've always enjoyed acting, did some improv stuff. Probably when I reflect back, I wish I would have put more of an emphasis in that. it's the choice that you make, that you're forced to make when you're a kid, which is like, do you want to do sports or do you want to do creative
Stuff and I wanted to do both, but you can't really do both. You only have so much time. And I
was a big kid. I weighed 300 pounds when I was 14 years old. So, like if you're 6'3, 300 pounds when you're 14, they're not gonna let you go do fiddler on the roof. Like you you grew up in Indiana. If you're that big, you're
Tom Hootman (34:43)
Yeah.
Mark Cross (34:44)
getting your ass out there, whether you like it or not. To you know, I want to play quarterback. Sorry, Mark.
here's a stripe on your helmet. Get down
Tom Hootman (34:50)
Yeah.
Mark Cross (34:52)
a three-point stance, figure it out, bitch. So, like, yeah, it's kind of been with me my whole life. I've enjoyed the acting part of it. One of the really cool stories I remember, the guy who used to be on Talk Soup
he told a story. He was on a walk on at University of Washington's football team, and I remember him telling a story of like.
I was not great at football, but then we had a skit night and I blew everybody away. I've got a very similar story. Like I was terrible in college. I went to a D3 college and I was bad. So I was the worst. Like I was below where like people should not be playing football. I was that bad. But we had skit night and I would crush it. And hearing him say that, I was like, man, yeah, I was probably in the wrong, the wrong work stream here.
Tom Hootman (35:30)
Joel McHale.
Mark Cross (35:31)
Joel McHale, that's it. Yes.
Tom Hootman (35:33)
You talked about Larry earlier. I like they were just talking about Larry. Lar bear.
Mark Cross (35:36)
I
I wish I remembered his life. It was literally twenty years ago. He was twenty years older than me, he'd be dead. I don't know.
Tom Hootman (35:41)
would you say that's like the professional relationship that materially materially changed your career? Is there someone else I've been able to do what I'm doing today because I had one person, who reached down and was You gotta get the hell out of restaurant, come join me in outside sales. And I was like, I can't sell shit And he's like, Dude, it's easy. It's hilarious. my team knows when a call starts to bomb and they're all off camera,
I'm gonna turn it up. I can't resist. I can't stop.
was there someone that reached over and pulled you in or like I wouldn't be here today without them.
Mark Cross (36:07)
Yeah,
I would say there's kind of three people professionally that have gotten me to this point. One, I had a good friend, his name was Neil. I was working for a company in Indianapolis, doing nonprofit tech, working with small organizations. And an opportunity came available on Neil's team, which would be a promotion and relocation to where I live now in Charleston. And I was not qualified for the job that he ultimately hired me for. And
He took a chance on me and he hired me. And I credit him for like really believing in me and hyping me up and telling me I could do things. He was also the first person in my life who gave me critical feedback in a professional setting that was truly helpful. It was done in the right way. It was always very specific that I could build on. It was actionable.
It wasn't trying to make me feel better. Like I've always been a person who's been tough with hearing things negative. He knew that and he pushed through it anyways. And that was it was so foundational to me to he to see a leader who made people better, not just by being everybody's best friend,
That person doesn't help you really grow at all. And in fact, you'll just continue to do bad things and kind of flounder. And Neil was the first manager who was like, Hey, this is the you know, this isn't up to standard, or like, I remember he called me one night and he was like, this
This message you just sent is very passive aggressive and you should not do that. And here's the reasons why. And after he said that, I was like, man, fuck this guy. He's not. And then like every day since that moment, I was like, that was very passive aggressive. I did that a lot in my life. I needed to like personal relationships, professional relationships, like that one conversation was incredibly helpful to be like, no, you're a very passive aggressive person and you're doing it on purpose and it's making people not like you. And you can turn that behavior around.
And so he was one big one. The next one is co-founder of the startup that I went to work for. His name is Nick, former Army Ranger. his dad was the head of counterintelligence at the CIA on 9-11. His dad has a he has a crazy life story. And he was he's he's such a character. He was
A guy in my life who at that startup, he got the most out of me professionally, more than anybody has ever gotten, and just instilled in me these are the things that you are good at. Do more of this. Don't do this. He even tried to warn me. We had a great parting. I left that startup after six years, and we talked about what I was going to do next. And he was like, Don't go work at a job just for the benefits, which is ultimately what I ended up doing, did some consulting. And he was so right about it.
Like I was doing it for the wrong reasons and he knew it. And he was like, You're gonna be bad at it. And not because you're bad. It's because you don't care. If you don't care about it, you're not gonna give it what you need to. And Jesus, man, It was spot on. A guy who just read me and he still returns, like, still giving good advice, still there to support me. If I'm like, I need an introduction to a person, he's gonna call and make the introduction. And then the last one, I have two former colleagues, Ben and Colin. We're still in a
text thread And if there's anything that has pushed me into content creation and believing that I could do it, it's these two guys who are just ultimate hype men, where they're like, you are funny. You're funnier than this person. your content is better than this. Hey, Mark, this guy's got 300,000 followers. You should have 300,000 followers because your content is better. And if you're a content creator, if you're trying to build something, I can't tell you like how validating it and needed it is to hear that from.
Other people who are giving you not just like, hey, it's good. What they're saying is, like, this is the thing that's good about it. Do more of
Tom Hootman (39:33)
Yeah.
Mark Cross (39:34)
this. You made this video, you should do more of that. That was really good. I remember telling them, people might know me, I make the millennial nostalgia content where I just talk about shit we did in the 2000s. And I remember I told them, like, this seems kind of hacky. Like, I'm just I'm just saying shit we did in the
Late 90s and early 2000s. Like, I don't know if I want to keep doing that. And one of them was like, Mark, you send me like a video a day that looks exactly like this. You can't tell me that you don't like this content when you consume this content. Like other people are doing this. You find it funny. Are are you like too above it? And I was like, Man, I he's 100% right. I do find it funny when other people are doing it. Like, does it matter if I think it's hacky?
I don't know, like to have some shred of artistic credibility, but at the same time, like if it's funny, that's all right. So
Tom Hootman (40:18)
Mm yeah.
Mark Cross (40:19)
yeah, those three groups of people are the ones that I really credit professionally to for getting me to the point where I'm at, for better or for worse, but really foundational for me.
Tom Hootman (40:28)
Yeah. you listed like four people, which is fantastic
Mark Cross (40:31)
takes a village.
Tom Hootman (40:33)
it takes a village. With me, it takes a village, folks. when I was like, I think I want to do something on my own and maybe it's agency and and here's what I think we could do and we would be pretty cool. And she said, Find ten people, because it's five of them are gonna blow you off. Find ten people you know from way back when, way back when, and just tell them what you're going to do and
hear what they have to say and take notes and then and let's talk and your mission is to get five conversations in two weeks. I ended up with eight, which was my first indicator, like, shit, people are really nice. And then I took everyone was not just like, hey, that's a great idea. They were like, Holy shit, man. I've been trying to tell you this for years. And also, do you need some help? Like people are like, how can I help you? Right? Like
Mark Cross (41:10)
Yeah.
Tom Hootman (41:11)
you gotta make an intro. And I went back to her and I was like
Lizard, I like, why is everyone so nice to me? Are they all blowing smoke up my ass? And she was like, You've been nice to people with a sarcastic tone and helping people out from a a position of relative psychological safety because you've been in the corporate world. She's like, they want to help you because you've helped them at some point in your career. And it's interesting because it's like, back to your video earlier. Hi, Jim. I haven't been thinking about you at all since the day I left. I didn't think about a random conversation or
them having a bad call and me being like, Hey, let me tell you about bad calls. And here's what next time prepare this way. Or here's what I went through and here's how I handled it. That they come back, do you remember that conversation we had in the hallway? And I'm like, no, I don't fucking remember that conversation at all. And they're like, here's what you said and thank you.
And you've changed their life to a certain extent. You're still thinking about shit years later.
from conversations that were simple coaching convers conversations that someone might not even remember.
Mark Cross (42:02)
Yeah, I think you know, kind of sum it all up. if people have listened this far in the podcast, they would say, like, what do I take away? there's two things I would say on that topic that is one, yeah, just be a kind and good and decent person to other people. And people are more than willing to return the favor. It's I was actually gonna make a video this morning, ran out of time. It will be coming up because I love this content idea. The bar is so fucking low for
Being a good manager these days. And I know that because I create shitty manager content where I make a joke about like managers that can't understand people need to go to the dentist. And I'm playing the manager who's like, no, people have like teeth and they got to do that. And people are in the comments saying, like, man, I wish I had a manager like you. You wish you had a manager who recognized that you're a human being with thoughts and feelings and emotions. That's
Tom Hootman (42:48)
And teeth?
Mark Cross (42:50)
all you need. So if you're out there and you're a manager and you're like, I want to be a better manager.
Like acknowledge your employees as human beings is the bar to being a great manager, which is in hell right now. So like it doesn't take that much, is the first thing that I would say. And the second thing in terms of like going out and doing it in your own, I always recommend a book called The Mom Test. I think it's the best business. If you're thinking about creating anything, going off and doing anything on your own, I would recommend it. It's short, it's 80 pages, it's very actionable.
And the central thesis is if you have a great idea for a company, don't ask your mom because she's gonna lie to you and she's gonna tell you it's great. But it goes on to say, like, don't ask the people around you because they're also gonna lie to you. And especially if you've been a good person, people are gonna hype you up. I've tried to start some other things in the past, and you get feedback from people, and they wanna support you and they want you to do well. So they're gonna be like, Yeah, it's good. It's really good. I launched this business on Monday.
In two days, I've had 7,000 followers on a new channel. I've got 30 organizations or businesses who have reached out. I've booked eight calls in two days. That is validation. Like look for the real validation. See through the people who just want to support you because you're doing something great and they think that you love it. That is that's warm and comforting and will make you feel great. But don't overlook the actual business validation of like,
if people don't want to buy your product, if they're not spending money to solve a problem today.
Does your product or service help do that better than they're what they're spending money on? And if the answer to that is yes, you have a business idea. And if it's no, you just have a bunch of people who don't want to disappoint you. And so, like, be able to test and validate your business independently of the people who just love you and want to support you, but you do need both.
Tom Hootman (44:32)
One last question, and thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it because you have a million things. I'm glad I got in and booked this with you before this week, because fuck. and I
Mark Cross (44:42)
It's taken off. But I appreciate it. This has been awesome.
Tom Hootman (44:45)
I I love this conversation. I I and it's my standard question though at the end. And you and I love this because you are into music. you know, the company's.
Mixtape digital. I worked at a music store. I love music. It's like a foundational theme in my life. If your career or your current place in your professional life had a two or three song playlist, what songs would you include and why?
Mark Cross (45:05)
So I would say my career playlist.
Do you know that the the the theme music that they play at the circus? Like the first 20 years of my career that. Easy. The second one would be
something AC/DC really like like for those about to rock that like really fast, really all encompassing maybe some like heavy metal wall of sound that is like intense.
And goes on for much longer than it has any reason to be. Like it's a Pantera song that's like eight minutes long, and you're like, how in the shit is this guy drumming and not dropping these sticks for this? And then the third phase of my career that's happening right now is like Country Joe and the Fish. You know that one from
Tom Hootman (45:47)
country drawing the fish.
Mark Cross (45:48)
Woodstock.
Tom Hootman (45:49)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Cross (45:49)
Give me
an F! Give me a U. Give me a C. Give me a K. What's that spell? they love sticking it to the man and saying some shit they're not supposed to say that will make
Thirty percent of people very angry and the other seventy percent as angry as they should be about what's happening in the world. And that's that's probably what I would pick. Yeah.
Tom Hootman (46:13)
Fuck, those are three great choices.
the circus
theme is gonna stick with me, man. Fucking the carousel music. send in the clowns, I think is something w it might be what it's called. Speechless.
Mark Cross (46:21)
It was
just drifting. I was just drifting aimlessly. People always ask, like, hey, why why does your resume start at this point? It's like because everything is a waste. I was getting fired from jobs and like I worked at a call center just outside of Indianapolis in a windowless call center for FHA, the Federal Housing Administration, for five years answering phone calls from mortgage originators. Yeah, in a building with no windows.
Tom Hootman (46:42)
It's a tour of duty.
Mark Cross (46:43)
And like that's where Larry and I connected. But
There's nothing memorable or interesting or like there's no point in me reflecting on that. I was just drifting through life. I remember coming home and telling my wife, like, I'm gonna be a person who hates their job for the rest of my life. I'm just gonna go in and do the work and then leave. And that was about the first like 15 or so years. It wasn't really until I started working with nonprofits where I was like, I care. I care about what you have to say and what is the outcome.
I remember there's a small animal shelter in like North Dakota. It was one of my first clients. And I was trying to sell them fundraising software. And it was so comparatively cheap. It was like $300 a year. And they were like, We're gonna do this $5K over the weekend. we think we could use this. And I was like, Okay, here it is. Here's what it you know has to offer. And the executive director got on the phone and was like, Mark.
We can't spend this money. Like $300 is one dog kennel. If we spend this $300 for you, we cannot house one dog. And so you have to promise me that this is gonna work. And I was like, no guarantees in life, but like
Tom Hootman (47:46)
Thanks, Sarah McLaughlin.
Mark Cross (47:47)
Yeah, I'm like, I don't I can't guarantee it, but like I would be shocked if you spent this $300 and you didn't at least raise that back. And so we sold it to him, we got it implemented. I put a note in my calendar to follow up on the date after the event.
And they called back and I already knew because I saw it, I saw the total, but I just wanted to hear them say it. And I was like, How'd it go? And they were like, We raised $27,000. And I was like, fuck yes. And then they were Yeah.
Tom Hootman (48:12)
How many dog kennels is that, fuckers?
Mark Cross (48:14)
And then they went on to tell me everything that they were gonna do with that money. like why I knew this is the industry that I wanted to be in forever, is because the first time.
The rest of my life in my sales career, I would have taken that moment to be like, I bet you regret saying that. Like the $300 thing. I didn't care about that. I was just all the way in on like, man, they're gonna build this whole thing. They're gonna do this. This is the new program. They can treat these animals and like you don't even care the fact that it was only a $300 sale and they gave you a hard time. You're just like celebrating this outcome with them. And that was
formational and foundational to me in my career. And it almost feels like everything professionally up until that moment of like, you can care about your customers and you can be vested in their outcomes and you could do great things and you can celebrate with them. Like those jobs exist, those professions exist. They these things exist in the world that it was like everything up until that point hadn't didn't matter anymore because I didn't have that
understanding and I wasn't in a position to like feel that way about the people that I was working with.
Tom Hootman (49:17)
Yeah. Holy shit, work can feel good if you're in the right place.
Mark Cross (49:20)
It can. And it's I feel very fortunate that I've spent now probably over ten years feeling as if the work I do makes a difference. And I still feel that way. And it's wonderful. I think there are a lot of people who are okay with that not being the case. You know, they just want to chase more money or a bigger promotion. I'm just not really coin operated in that way. For me it is do I have a vested interest in like what you want to get done? And those are the things that are are just driving me. So
Tom Hootman (49:44)
Mark, thanks for your time. Honestly, appreciate it. It's been a wonderful conversation. I hope we can actually talk again. Definitely, let's stay in touch.
Thanks, Mark. Take care.
Mark Cross (49:52)
I appreciate
the time. Thanks, Tom.