Welcome to the Corvus Effect, where we take you behind the scenes to explore integrated self leadership and help ambitious family men build lasting legacies for themselves, their tribe, and their community. I'm Scott Raven, and together we'll discover how successful leaders master a delicate balance of career advancement, personal health, financial growth, and meaningful relationships.

Get ready to soar.

And hello everybody. Thank you once again for . Joining us on another episode of the Corvus effect. I'm Scott, and I am thrilled today to be joined by Mark Holden, a wealth management advisor with nearly two decades of experience in financial services and for Mark, it's not just about the numbers.

He is a self proclaimed lemonade maker. Balancing professional expertise with family life and community involvement. He's had numerous appearances on the TD Ameritrade network, as well as the CFP and CWS nations, but he's also got a ton of volunteer work. A ton of community involvement and a daughter who is an aspiring weightlifter.

Mark, thank you for joining us.

Oh, Scott, it is a pleasure to be here today. I am fired up to have this conversation with you, my friend.

Absolutely. I am fired up to, and let's just get right into it because really where your journey took off was the transition into wealth management, which allowed you to start to make that journey towards the lemonade maker. So I'd love for you to start there and tell us how that came about.

I got to tell you, Scott, my life has been an interwoven web of discovery, skillset, characteristics, growth, curiosity. I mean, how I see my life is not just linear for sure. And that's where, I'm drawing this lemonade maker, lifestyle because. I've recognized that everyone has a character arc and digging into that can be difficult at times, but once you're there, magic truly happens.

So you talk about magic with these character arc or arcs, because some of us go through multiple character arcs and you're no different because, you grew up, down South and, found your way up North to Chicago and, talk to me a little bit about that journey in terms of different environments, different learnings, , that made you the.

multi faceted character that you are today.

, Hey, listen, checks in the mail, pal, I love how you're fluffing me up already early in the podcast. So I was born in new Orleans, Louisiana. When I was two years old, we moved to Birmingham, Alabama. My father was a plant manager at a coffee company. So he would come home smelling like roasted coffee beans every day of my life, which.

wait, wait, wait, wait. You're, you're naturally caffeinated. You don't, I mean, come on now.

Well, that's the thing. I didn't even want to drink coffee, as a budding adult because I felt like I was intaking the essence of my father.

There you go there.

So, I was like, what am I going to do with my world? I followed a friend. I went to Auburn University, War Eagle, and, discovered so much. In the world from the lens of academia at Auburn, tried out a couple of times for the mascot position, actually, all be the tiger. That was the origin story of where I was really curious about what it is that makes a character, but I didn't know it yet.

I didn't know it yet. So I was in Java two programming class and my professor said, I know you like this stuff now, everyone, but imagine doing this eight hours a day. And I was like, Nope, see ya. I immediately

Hey, as somebody who started as a software developer before switching, I appreciate that comment. I'll put it that way. I was able to do it for four years, so

Wow. You stuck it through longer than I did. That's for sure. But I didn't want to waste any time because I knew it grew, it grinded against my natural, energies and vibrations, if you will. So started taking a bunch of electives, discovered beginning acting and absolutely fell in love with the idea of stage performance, character arc, narrative discovery presentation.

And then I immediately switched majors to bachelor fine arts theater performance, and spent a couple, two and a half years there. Now the reason why I enjoyed it was because had natural inclinations, To do it, but also the market at the time. I was like a tall man, you know, and, ready to be poised for the theater stage that I was in need.

And I literally got stage performance time immediately after taking that beginning acting class.

Nice.

So that was the trigger sequence. A friend of mine came back from a trip to Chicago and he says, Mark, they got this crazy thing called improvisation.

I think you need to check it out.

All right.

This is, what?

Now we're talking like second city theater or we're talking

yeah, Second City, ImprovOlympic, the Annoyance Theater. So I started writing letters, handwritten letters, to these theaters when I was a junior in college. The response I got back from the Annoyance Theater, the guy that was living in a loft just above the Annoyance.

I flew out to Chicago, wanted to try my hand at what it was like being here. Discovered so much culture, people experiences. I said, this is it. After I graduated, I'm coming here.

All right. So beyond the fact that we have the adjustment to a Chicago winter, which I hear is brutal, you're a much better man than I when it comes down to that, right? We also have the transition while you're in Chicago from. to financial management. How does that work?

How in deed, this is the magic I referenced earlier. What I didn't know at the time was that every opportunity was around me at all moments. My issue. Was I was too myopic. I was too narrow focused. It was like a horse in a horse race with those blinders on. Can't see the sides. So I was just hyper focused on what is immediately, solvable, what is immediately, accessible. My only experience was really in the world of theater. So I was thinking I should just exist in this space. I was taking a number of improvisational classes and it was level four, level four at the Annoyance Theater. And they said, Hey, how many people do you know are famous from coming through improv classes, the whole program.

And we were, you know, the class was naming individuals left and right, like the Tina phase of the world. And we named maybe 25, 30 people and we're all excited about it. And then the instructor says, great, cool. Okay. How many hundreds of thousands of students have come to these programs?

Mhmm.

And we're like, wait a minute.

What?

ha ha ha

And then the instructor says, cool.

me the odds are slim?

Yeah. They said, odds are slim that you're going to be successful. Let's do some improv. And then we were all frozen, but thank God that gift was delivered that day. Because again, I realized I don't want to waste any more time. I'm not going to spend two decades of my life hoping that an opportunity pops up.

I want to actually manifest this myself. Got, employed by a startup company. That was an options trading, firm that was, ultimately bought by TD Ameritrade and then TD was bought by Schwab. But at the time I was in the environment of X floor traders, you know, people in the open outcry pits, hand signals going back and forth.

I learned that language of derivatives first.

So when we're talking like, trading places and all the various pits that are, trading everything including frozen concentrated orange juice, right? You saw that first hand.

That was, that was it. Here's a perfect example. We would, someone would say, Mark, are you going to the party this weekend? And I'd say, I don't know. Are you going? And they would say, I'm a 30 Delta. Wait, what? You're a 30 Delta. I'm going to the party this weekend. So it was like, in terms of probabilities, outcomes, influence on the pricing of a thing, but not necessarily just a thing in esoteric concept, everything can be influenced by probability, and so that's where That education experience really started to take me off.

I know this is a long winded answer for a short little question.

Oh, come on. Now everybody's taking this up, man.

What I saw again, I didn't believe that I had financial experience and I was not going to do well in the world of finance. However, what I saw quickly was that theater gave me the greatest opportunity, when it came to finance, because it's all a human construct.

And Cedar is just as old as finance, if not older. And so if it's a human construct and we apply human theory to it, both the greed, the uncertainty. And the fear and that is going to push and pull the market demands at all times.

You know, that is a beautiful segue because I know one of the things that you express quite strongly is this more holistic concept of wealth going back to the ancients, going back to the Greeks, where we're talking about. Time and wisdom and space and energy and relationships. And that there is a psychology behind how we think about our financial situation, that money is a tool that's neither inherently good or bad.

We assign good and bad to it. And from your perspective, I would love to get your thoughts in terms of what you've seen. In terms of the psychology that folks have towards wealth and some of the common misconceptions that they have, particularly when we're talking about the big stuff, like retirement plan, as an example,

This is a huge, so there's a lot in this question. How much time you got?

I'm here. Ain't going nowhere.

yeah. So when we think about, retirement planning, just that itself, many. Many Americans think, well, I have to put money into my 401k. I have to, save, I have to keep some emergency funds.

And while that's all true, it's this concept of, I have to, I'm being forced to do this, to stop working in the future when I theoretically cannot work any longer. Well, these are relatively historic mechanisms. The modern time information is so readily accessible that there's so many variants of lifestyles.

Now, this all came about because there was an entire working class in the industrial space that you put in your nine to five and you came home to relax and you put in so many decades and then you potentially got a pension. Well, then pension started to phase

Product of the American education system to be, you know, capable workers in the workplace to be able to retire and then what?

Right, exactly. And that entire set of identities for the character. In the career in the company that they work for it's really dismantled and loyalty just falling apart relative to a company.

We're not talking about the 30, 40, 50 year tenures anymore. Those days are relatively gone.

Because pensions are a great example. There's been an untethering of that benefits package for a company. So then companies say, well, we're more agile, more nimble and flexible now. So the benefits packages are more about experiential. You know, how do we improve the experience of the employee?

Well, you know, kind of reducing that back down to what does retirement look like? It is such an esoteric concept now. For just the person listening when you envision retirement You just envision an older version of yourself doing less things, but that's not necessarily how this works out age or rather time cannot be Manipulated but everything else in the world of your currencies space wisdom, dollars in the bank account These can be adjusted they can be designed And so if we can stop thinking so much about the binary moment of working to non working, career to retirement, then we can think about the fluid transitions of how we learn about what our family gives us, how we learn about our environment, our people, our church, our philosophies, everything that gives us and how we can reciprocate that back.

It's going to be this beautiful fluid transition over many decades.

And you talk about generation so the audience which traditionally listen to this podcast ranges from what I would say is mid to later Gen X to early to mid millennial. In terms of where they are on the spectrum.

I know firsthand, you can't put a label on me. And say, what is my desired retirement? Just because I am this certain age. And I would assume with a lot of the people that you see and you work with that you find the same thing that the labels of what retirement is supposed to be, we just throw those out.

They don't exist anymore.

So then it's like, well, as I mentioned a moment ago, you design the future. You know that this going to be fluid and influential based on who you are developing kids and, your family, your community, that reciprocation back must give you a foundation. It's not something that's going to be a shiny object that you're continually running for a shift of hope.

This is a discovery process of what's outside. So you can influence that not a discovery process of what's internal because we have everything we can solve for internally. That's not the issue. So we don't want to fall into the trap of, I need this every single day.

I need to be somebody else. I need to be somebody else. No, we are confident. We are masculine. We are comfort. And that wisdom will share itself towards what presumably retirement will eventually

Do you think that exactly that statement. Is the reason people avoid financial planning discussions that there is a uncomfortableness with saying, I have to allow the future to be fluid. There is an anxiety in terms of somebody coming to them and saying, this is the target number that you have to hit by this date.

In order to feel confident that you will have the runway that you are looking for and the choices and decisions that have to come as a result of that.

excellent question. One is a character, the natural character set inherent to someone's DNA. I'm a little bit more outgoing.

hmm. Mm hmm.

Sometimes people say, I hate being outgoing. I am an introvert. I hate being in social settings. I hate networking. I will look at numbers on a page all day long.

Great. Okay. So as long as you can identify and be comfortable in that world. And then the second piece of this is the imposter syndrome. It is the negative self narrative that may likely have been caught by parents or others in our influence sphere as a young adult. But. I'm giving the audience permission right now to let that go

Wow, that's powerful because you get so much of who you are. In the first 14 years of life, the first seven years, effectively a sponge, the next seven, you are in experimentation in terms of what do you want to keep? And what do you want to revise? A lot of that, like you said, come from your parents.

You're saying, let it all go.

I'm saying let it. And here's why I'm saying that because it needs to be said out loud. There are broad swaths. I mean, men is mainly your audience, I'm

Yes.

Okay. There's broad swaths of men in those age brackets that you just discussed that feel isolated. They feel vulnerable, but they don't have the language or mental set to express.

what it is that they're feeling. And

been

that's

told, they've been told, suck it up. Take it like a

been told, suck it up. And there's this misconception that vulnerability leads to weakness, but that is the strength of character. Hey, if I can let go of my ego just a little bit, because the ego can serve you, but most often it will take

away from your opportunities. So you leverage the wisdom. So as we grow older, we crystallize our comprehension of the world, but we can, as my English teacher in high school said, we can groove in bad strokes. As if you're playing tennis, you keep doing the wrong thing over and over,

We can reassess our definition. Of ourselves, our characteristics set really, and our ability to influence the outside space, outside world, our environment. And then once that awareness is there, you take action. Awareness is a critical piece. It's the glue. to get to action. But then action is absolutely mandatory.

And by action, I mean, self assess. Oh, my goodness. Why am I reacting so negatively to the concept of saving more budgeting or posting on a social network joining a podcast? What is the restrictive character inside that's doing this? Punch it in the face, redesign the definition, and then abundance begins to show up in your life.

We talk about, the three critical pillars of effective self leadership. Those being self awareness, self belief, and then the third one, self accountability. And particularly as you were talking about. For men. And there is a fair percentage of population of men who live in isolation, who live without anybody, but themselves in order to drive accountability.

What would you say to them in terms of starting an effective and a productive conversation with somebody else?

So, beautiful, beautiful question. And isolation is not just physical isolation. You could be a family man. You could be running a community. You could be running groups at church, but you could still experience vast amounts of isolation because we attach this expectation that people need us to not be weak or vulnerable.

And that is the slippery slope. So we talk about awareness, belief, accountability. I personally believe that, , if you think about a hierarchy of things inside, values are the core belief. Is the layer just above values. Okay. So if you find yourself in a conversation with someone and you're not on the same page, reset to value and then you realize it's just different belief systems that drive us different directions.

So with that in mind, I mean, Scott, you and I believe in the quality of production, of life, of experimentation, of development and moving forward. But then there's other things that we may not believe on. So then the belief is open dialogue

Mm hmm.

so that we can shift that a little bit, which leads itself to that third piece you talked about in your core world is accountability.

Accountability, Is important, but it's also a function of who's around you,

Yes. Gotta have that tribe around you.

all the big time. So this is, this is the heart. This is the greatest of leaps. It might be, you know, you think about like a zero to one versus one to 10, the zero to one leap is the hardest

Mm hmm.

me.

Oh, yeah.

And

Particularly because men do not, like to express vulnerability. They do not like to express the need to be helped. Absolutely.

So then we choose who it is that we're asking this question to. We have to wait, W E I G H T, the believability of someone. If we look up to a particular person, do a soft ask, Hey, I'm working on some ideas. I'd love to get your opinion, see the response. If the response is genuine and true, thank you for this.

I'm looking for a little bit more mentorship. I'm looking for a little bit more, idea sets framework. You don't just ask for the greatest of all things. You ask for small bits and you develop the relationship over time because trust is a two way street.

Yes.

Not just one. So then you create this accountability partner.

You have to say it out loud. Scott, I have clients and non clients that I give homework assignments to. I tell them you look like you are OCD. You are falling apart and your definition of success is perfection and perfection is impossible. So what is the problem? Let it go.

Mm hmm.

I'm going to give you a homework assignment.

I want you to break things. Okay. And he's like, what are you talking about? I said, I want you to not hold the door open when you walk into a restaurant or a place, I want you to drop a piece of trash in the sidewalk and walk away. And Scott, if you could see his body fidget in the chair, you know, it's like

He obviously did not go to your improv acting classes. I'll put it that way. So,

physical recoil, I could tell his body was denying that this is a possibility of growth. And I said, I'm going to follow up in one week and I want to find out exactly what you've done.

And what happened?

well, I, the immediate response was, uh, I don't think I could do this. I, you know, don't expect anything from me, but the fact that I asked and then I did follow up, I held true to my word.

I discovered that there was a success. The success came from this, but not what maybe you and I are thinking of. And this person is successful by the way, multiple units, downtown Chicago,

Right. So all the rest of the world, we would want to have his life. He would say not so fast. Okay.

and the audience can only hear me, they can't see me, but he said that he shifted his shoes by about a couple centimeters at night. So he had all the shoes lined up, but he shifted one shoe forward and one shoe back and then tried to go to sleep. he couldn't sleep all night knowing that the shoes were off symmetry.

I have the picture in my head of the movie as good as it gets starring Jack Nicholson and how OCD he was in terms of other things that he had to open and close the door five times before he could go through. And towards the end of the movie, he's like, I forgot to lock the door. And that he realizes it's okay.

He realizes,

it was okay. All

that's correct because we can rewire our brains. We can build new neuroplasty. And if someone can offer peer leadership, a believability coach, or someone who you trust that says you can do differently, that creates growth.

Let's take this and say, how do you then apply that to the home front in terms of your desire to have the work life integration you want across all of the roles, including personal and specifically the involvement that you have. In your daughter's activities.

I am so proud of what. And you're referring to my older daughter. She does Olympic weightlifting and

Yes. Yes. Yes. You have multiple, this is the one where I'm just like, all right, there's a story to be told here. I'll put it that

there's a huge story. She was bullied, at school and, I didn't even recognize it. Admittedly, I was in my own world. This is, a few years ago. And, we even moved to a suburb of Chicago, a different school district, and she's been, blossoming since still working on stuff.

And I have a second, younger daughter too. So I'm a girl dad for sure.

You, and, my favorite Eagle, Jason Kelsey can, get together since he's going to have number four.

That's right. We're on the same plane. Me and Jason.

you go.

Well, look, I recognized pretty quickly that my parenting style was not going to address the needs of my evolving daughters like flat out. And I will also tell you that it was. Really hard. Scott, really hard to transition to a new version of a father

Yes.

because I wanted to hang on.

To my internal perceived legacy. Now we operate through life, whether it's getting a cup of coffee at Starbucks or talking to our kids in a default mechanism, for the most part,

Mm hmm.

We respond as if there is an expectation deep in our minds of what that.

Yes.

If you take enough improv classes, you realize that there's no such thing as improv. We are simply responding to the assumption that a character would in at that given catalyst of a set of catalysts in that

I'm curious because part of what we've learned to go off tangible that is how to appropriately interject the pause between Q and response to improve what response you give. Is that something you've learned along the way in terms of how to interject that?

Yes, but it was different than the concept of improvisation.

I got,

And I'll, and I'll, and I'll touch on that. Both those will intertwine right now. Improvisation teaches you to make bold choices, and if you don't make bold choices, then the, performance doesn't move forward. And the audience gives up their interest and attention very quickly.

say stage words for life, making the bold choice when presented it.

Yeah, because people will not give you attention until they understand that you believe in them, or at least this perception of that's the quote unquote, every man I can identify with the things that they're doing. They're palpable to my situation. And then we start to give more attention.

Otherwise the soft, kind, meek doesn't always work when it comes to, parenting, firm, wise, masculine. That's a very different thing. You don't have to be dramatic and over the top, but direct. And then listen. So to your point, the pause effect,

Yes.

where did that come from? And this may get into some other questions you might've had for me, but I had magical experiences volunteering my time at a group called heroes and horses in Montana over the last couple of summers. And I mean, I could talk for hours on that, but I'll, I'll concisely say,

I think I would lose my audience.

yes, exactly.

You talk about bold response. That's not the type of bold response we're looking for.

That's it. I did not realize how much bias, how much. anchoring. I was carrying around with me at all times until I was able to release, get away from digital detox, eating very well, whole 30 diet, going through all the modalities of therapy. And I started to, again, what we talked about, separate that space to grow, to improve.

And I realized that I was forcing upon my children very similar behavioral traits that my father was forcing upon me.

Yep, absolutely.

for worse, that was happening and I said, I wanted to be a better version of this. And so when we are talking, my kids and I, and I start to find my body not liking the concept of whatever they're saying, I say, give me a moment.

Let me process it. I don't just outright pause. I interject with the bold choice. Give me just a moment. Or Scott, this happened the other day. I am a product of fixing things. I don't know not how, I don't know how

A very masculine trait for

It is. And I said, that's my default thinking. And literally using these words, that's my default thinking, honey.

Please give me just a moment to back off of this because it doesn't look like you're looking for a solution. You're looking for space.

Yes.

The energy immediately changed in the room.

I say that out loud now, cause it's easy. But in real time, it's really hard,

hmm. Mm hmm.

but holy crap. Later that night, she gives me a hug while I'm like falling asleep in the bed.

That is a indirect outcome of strength and vulnerability

Yes.

because you cannot force the, a beautiful young daughter. You cannot force them to think and identify with your mapped out patterns of thought, because you know what happens? They will get squeezed out. They will leave the nest too early.

They will look for attention elsewhere.

Right.

So then create the environment that unlocks their potential. And that means addressing your damn biases.

Mm hmm. Amen. Amen. Well, let's, talk about that as we move towards the close of this episode. And I always close at a starting point with the concept of the last lecture, Randy Posh and how he provided that lecture and wrote the book and said, did you catch my last head fake? This was for my kids.

So your daughters are now listening to this episode. What are the biggest things you want them to take away?

I want them to know that my every moment is for inspiring their future life. I am leading them to a life of contentment, peace, and discovery. That's in the glory of our Maker. That's in the natural order of how this world works, like physically speaking. I want them to identify that they can grow, develop, and love holistically.

They can love themselves, their environment, and how their mind works. Without that, I find myself rather untethered.

Mm hmm.

So we have discussions around what legacy means, because I'd rather them understand the concepts as opposed to the technical information.

How can people get in contact with you and reach out to you to learn more about you and the tremendous amount of wisdom that you bring to the table?

Scott, I appreciate you so much for even having the opportunity for me to

Pleasure's mine, man.

Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. Mark Holden, CFP, CWS. I'm here in Chicago with the boutique firm, Vestor Capital right now. And, don't be afraid. Do not be afraid. And as a matter of fact, that's the homework assignment.

You don't have to reach out to me, but reach out to someone and just develop a relationship that is everything. Just get it going.

Yes, yes. And we'll make sure in the show notes that we'll put that link up, for Mark and best capital and Mark. It's been an honor and privilege to have you on the podcast. Any final words before we close out here?

I release you from negative self talk.

Powerful,

That's it, man.

powerful, powerful. Well, Mark, this was a powerful set of wisdom that you provided the audience. Thank you so much to the listening audience. Thank you so much for taking the time and using this as hopefully the catalyst to great things coming up for you. And we will check you out on the next podcast.

Thanks, Scotty.

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