Mark Worster is the Founder of The New Mysteries, a personal transformation initiative that blends ancient wisdom with modern therapeutic practices to help individuals access deeper levels of consciousness. Previously, he founded Novation IT Services and served as CEO of Unitel, a two-time Inc. 500 honoree, which he later sold to his brother, marking a pivotal transition in his professional journey. Known as “nurseMARK,” Mark is a sought-after speaker and coach, offering insights on mental health, entrepreneurship, and transformational healing.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [2:27] Mark Worster’s early childhood jobs and growing up fast in a working-class environment
- [7:21] Life lessons from the Marine Corps that influenced Mark’s business success
- [8:48] Importance of reinvention in the IT business and surviving economic downturns
- [12:44] How yoga and meditation helped Mark survive financial stress
- [17:08] The transformative potential of cannabis medicine
- [20:19] Journey into psychiatric nursing and the motivation behind it
- [23:24] Mark’s transformative mushroom experience that dissolved lifelong depression
- [28:32] How childhood and ancestral programming shape our lives and behaviors
- [35:42] The power of holotropic breathwork and its psychedelic-like impact
- [41:20] The Stoned Ape theory and how psychedelics may have influenced human evolution
In this episode…
Despite achieving outward success, many high performers feel a lingering sense of dissatisfaction or internal struggle. What if the root cause lies deep in our subconscious, formed not by conscious choice but by childhood conditioning, inherited trauma, and neurological programming? Could psychedelics and breathwork offer a path to profound healing and clarity?
Mark Worster, a mental health advocate, answers these questions with powerful personal stories and professional insight. After decades as a successful CEO and enduring lifelong treatment-resistant depression, Mark found healing through psychedelic therapy and breathwork. He discusses how these tools helped him uncover subconscious programming, access true choice, and ultimately find joy. Now, he helps others achieve similar breakthroughs by guiding them through transformative practices and consciousness-expanding experiences.
Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews Mark Worster, Founder of The New Mysteries, about rewiring the subconscious mind. Mark discusses his journey from the Marines and IT entrepreneurship to mental health advocacy, along with insights on psychedelic therapy, breathwork, and the quest for genuine fulfillment.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- John Corcoran on LinkedIn
- Rise25
- Mark Worster on LinkedIn
- The New Mysteries
- “How to Change Your Mind” on Netflix
- Entrepreneurs’ Organization
Special Mention(s):
Quotable Moments:
- “I needed to be doing this work, helping people discover what’s driving them from the shadows.”
- “Psychedelics helped me experience a life without depression for the first time I could remember.”
- “Programs in your subconscious run your life until you bring them to light and reset them.”
- “Joy is the only true measure of success, and you can’t fake your way into it.”
- “Breathwork done properly is a psychedelic experience — no medicine, just your breath and intention.”
Action Steps:
- Explore your subconscious programming: Reflect on early childhood experiences and inherited beliefs that may unconsciously shape your behavior. Understanding these patterns is the first step toward transformation and personal freedom.
- Consider alternative healing modalities: Tools like psychedelic therapy and breathwork can reveal deep insights and unresolved trauma. These approaches can be more effective than conventional treatments for many people struggling with depression or emotional blocks.
- Practice breathwork regularly: Breathing techniques can access deep emotional layers and offer clarity and healing. Consistent practice may help bypass mental resistance and unlock a sense of connectedness and peace.
- Embrace transformation through discomfort: Whether it’s a challenging breathwork session or a psychedelic journey, growth often lies on the other side of discomfort. Facing these moments consciously can lead to profound personal breakthroughs.
- Redefine success by internal metrics: Rather than chasing external validation, assess your joy and alignment. As Mark Worster suggests, “Joy is the only true measure of success,” and it should guide both personal and professional decisions.
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Episode Transcript
John Corcoran: 00:00
All right. Today we’re talking about how to understand your deepest programming that is outside of your conscious awareness and maybe holding you back. There may be something that could lead to greater happiness for you. My guest today is Mark Worster. I’ll tell you more about him in a second, so stay tuned.
Intro: 00:19
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran: 00:35
All right. Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran here. I’m the host of this show. You know, if you’ve listened before that we’ve had all kinds of smart CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs from all kinds of companies.
We’ve had Netflix and Grubhub, Grubhub and Redfin, Gusto, Kinko’s, you name it. Lots of great episodes. So check out those archives. And this episode, before we get into the interview, brought to you by Rise25, our company where we help businesses to give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. How do we do that?
We do that by helping you to run your podcast. We are the easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do three things: strategy, accountability, and full execution. In fact, we invented what some are calling the B2B podcasting. It’s our platform Podcast Copilot.
So if you want to learn more, you can go to our website that’s at Rise25.com or email us at [email protected]. And before I get to today’s guest, I want to give a shout out to Jessica Aiello. Jessica is a great friend. She organizes a community of leaders, entrepreneurial leaders who are interested in some of the topics that we’re going to be talking about here today, and know her through the Entrepreneurs’ Organization, and she is the reason that Mark and I are connected here today. And Mark is the former CEO of Unitel, where he led an IT company for 30 years before he sold it back in 2017.
And he has an amazing, varied background. He’s been in the Marines, he’s been a registered psychiatric nurse, mental health advocate, and his most recent company is The New Mysteries. It’s an initiative focused on integrating ancient and modern techniques for personal transformation. And just an amazing, interesting guy with a quite a background. He and I connected at the Global Leadership Conference in Hawaii recently and had a lot of different things to talk about. So I’m looking forward to it. But Mark, let’s start with who you were as a kid. I’d love to know what people were like. And you, you said you did it all. Farmhand paper routes, lobster boats.
Mark Worster: 02:27
All of that. You know, my my, the mantra from my father was, you know what? Grow up. Just grow up. And so I grew up at an early age. My first job was at 8 or 9 years old, mowing lawns, rolled into a paper route, turned into a farmhand at 12 years old. So, you know, if you didn’t know, a bushel of green beans is a lot of green beans. And I got paid a dollar and a quarter for a bushel of green beans picked.
John Corcoran: 02:54
You had to pull them off. I’ve never pulled green. Like pulling them off of a vine or something like that. Wow.
Mark Worster: 03:00
Yeah, it was it. It was legit work. So. Wow. Yeah.
So at an early age, I really started, you know, my journey. And then I ended up, as you said, on a lobster boat as a stern man, which was a great job. And then in the Marines at 17.
John Corcoran: 03:17
Now, lobster boat can be tough work too, isn’t it?
Mark Worster: 03:20
Listen, you go out in any kind of weather. It doesn’t matter if it’s thick fog. The seas are heavy. Like every two days. You know, you’re fishing 600 pots every two days. You’re pulling 300 pots. So you know, you’re working it. Wow. And and. Yeah, it was a super interesting job. It really was. Yeah. Being on the water.
John Corcoran: 03:42
Yeah, yeah. So you did that. And then you, at age 17, enlisted in the Marines. What led to that?
Mark Worster: 03:53
You know, I was in my senior year of high school and the principal said, hey, listen, you just got to come to school like you have the grades to graduate, but you’re not showing up. And, and and I said, well, I don’t know, I don’t know, I think I’m just going to quit. And so I quit high school, right. And my mother said, listen, you’re not going to sit on my couch, is it? Okay.
Now I have to figure out what to do. And a friend of mine had just come back from boot camp. And, you know, when you get out of boot camp, I mean, you look good. I said, you know, that might be for me. So I went and saw the recruiter, and I came home with all the paperwork and my mother was like, are you sure?
And I said, yeah. And then, you know, I don’t think I ever saw her smile as much as when she signed that paperwork. She’s like, okay, he’s going to he’s going to be okay.
John Corcoran: 04:39
She was happy about it.
Mark Worster: 04:40
She was.
John Corcoran: 04:41
Happy about it because it was giving you some.
Mark Worster: 04:42
Direction, some focus.
John Corcoran: 04:43
Give me some direction. Exactly. And it did exactly what it was supposed to do. It did give me that direction. I mean, there are, you know, it was a program, right? I mean, for three months, they put you through this boot camp, and you come out programmed for the job that they want you to do. So, you know, there are still things that I use every day, you know.
John Corcoran: 05:03
Like what? What do you do?
Mark Worster: 05:04
Laces are always left over, right? The laces are always left over right. If you’re in the Marine Corps, left over right is the way you do your laces on your shoes, like simple stuff like that. But there are other things like, I think probably one of the best ones, John, that I used in my business too, was always leaving a place better than you found it. Like, if you like, we would go to army bases and they would give us the worst barracks, right? They would give us the stuff that was just rundown and nasty, and it was like new when we left because it was like, we’re going to just make sure that we leave this better than we found it.
John Corcoran: 05:41
Now, I had friends in high school who entered the Marines and went through boot camp, and I, you know, heard the stories and I never went through something of that challenge. Were there times when you wanted to give up?
Mark Worster: 05:55
Every day. Every single day.
John Corcoran: 05:59
What kept you.
Mark Worster: 06:00
From? I was in trouble when the bus pulled up and. And the drill instructor got on and started screaming at everybody, and we got out and stepped in the yellow footprints which are out there. And that was the moment I said, okay, what did I do? What did I do?
But every day, every day was a challenge. And, you know, it’s a mental, physical, torturous process to get you to come out the other side. But honestly, John, it was the first time that I ever felt that I belonged to a group because I didn’t play sports in school. And it’s the first time that I had really accomplished something that not many people had. And so I felt there was a real level of pride in that carried forward.
You know, I mean, I like business. I have walked into rooms, you know, years later, after I was out of the Marine Corps, I’d walk into a room and I’d be in a room full of networking people, and someone would walk up and say, you were in.
John Corcoran: 06:58
Weren’t you?
Mark Worster: 07:00
And I’m like. How did you know?
John Corcoran: 07:02
Just by the way you hold yourself.
Mark Worster: 07:04
Because, yeah, because you do. Do you have that certain confidence? Yeah. So it was a beautiful experience. It really was.
John Corcoran: 07:11
Yeah. I mean, and there’s a reason why boot camp is so challenging is because the Marines only want the best. And if you’re going to fold, they would rather you fold during boot camp.
Mark Worster: 07:21
Yeah. They want to make sure, you know, I mean, the deal is when you’re in combat, you want to make sure that the person that you’re in the foxhole with is going to have your back, and there’s just no room for error. There’s no room for, you know, for losing it. It’s life or death. So yeah, of course they really do. They do wean out people who are not, you know, ready to be in that, that kind of a Situation.
John Corcoran: 07:46
So you after the Marines. I believe you started your IT company with your brother. Is that correct?
Mark Worster: 07:52
Yeah. I started the IT company in and you know it was telco and it in the beginning and and it remained that so we did both. We did pretty much everything that you needed as a small or medium sized business we would be able to take care of. So I started it in 1987. My brother came in, you know, I think 6 or 7 months in, I brought him in as a partner and, and, you know, we were off to the races and it’s still running today, you know, 30, whatever. 35, 36, seven years later.
John Corcoran: 08:26
Yeah, yeah.
Mark Worster: 08:27
Yeah. Still running. You know, I sold my shares. I had a majority shareholder and I sold that to my brother and left in 2017. And he’s still running a beautiful lifestyle business and it’s exactly what he wanted.
John Corcoran: 08:41
Why do you think the company is still around 3030 years later because there’re so many companies that don’t last that long.
Mark Worster: 08:48
Man, you know, I mean, the stats, the first year, the first five years, the majority of businesses don’t make it. You know, I think that in the IT business, specifically in that business, you have to learn how to reinvent yourself every two years, right? Technology changes. You got to retrain everybody. You got to take on new product lines.
You got to kind of really be forward thinking. And I think that creates within the organization just a group of people who are really nimble and able to continually change with the times. You know, so we got really good at doing that. And they continue to do it, which is fabulous.
John Corcoran: 09:26
Do you think your training as a marine helped with that, with being nimble, with adapting to the times?
Mark Worster: 09:32
Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah.
John Corcoran: 09:33
Because you’re like I mean, this economic downturn, I can handle that. I went through boot camp.
Mark Worster: 09:37
Many economic downturns we go through in 30 years.
John Corcoran: 09:40
Oh, yeah. So many.
Mark Worster: 09:42
One year.
John Corcoran: 09:42
Into all the time.
Mark Worster: 09:43
We had an economic downturn.
John Corcoran: 09:44
Oh, yeah. 87. Right. That was.
Mark Worster: 09:47
The. Yeah. 88.
Mark Worster: 09:49
You know, all of a sudden, you know, the primary client that I had, I was doing a lot of subcontracting said, hey, listen, we don’t need you anymore. And I was like, okay, I can I can either really start to double down and, and get this thing off the ground, or I can go back to work for somebody and, you know, thank God I put on the suit and I went out and I found new people to subcontract for, and I found new clients. And we were just made, you know, we were on the Inc. 500 list twice.
John Corcoran: 10:17
Wow.
Mark Worster: 10:17
Mid 90s, which was great. And we had a lot of growth. Yeah.
John Corcoran: 10:22
What did you end up selling it eventually, I believe you sold to your brother. Your brother continues to run it. Okay. What? What motivated that? Why did you want to sell?
Mark Worster: 10:32
You know, you have to be careful what you do in life. Have you ever heard of landmarks? Landmark worldwide.
John Corcoran: 10:38
Forums? Yeah.
Mark Worster: 10:40
Yeah.
Mark Worster: 10:40
Landmark. The. Yeah, the forum. Advanced forum.
Mark Worster: 10:43
Curriculum for living. Right. So landmarks have been around for, I don’t know, 30, 40 years. It’s based on work done by a guy named Werner Earhart in the early 70s. It’s really controversial stuff.
It’s about transformation. And I like to say it’s a psychedelic journey using logic. Like they make your prefrontal cortex squeak to a halt, explode, and then you’re in this world of, well, shit, I get to choose what my life is. Oh my God. So I really resonated with being in healthcare in some capacity.
And so that was 2010. And I felt like, you know, I just didn’t want to shuck computers anymore. You know, technology was great. But, you know, I’m the kind of person that’ll do things for a period of time. And then I’m good.
Like, I became a yoga instructor in 1998. It was right in the beginning of the yoga boom in the US. I went on a retreat. This is great. This is a great story.
Bank of America came in after two years of having a $300,000 line of credit, and I was out $300,000 because we’re financing the business because I didn’t really know how to run a business. Right.
John Corcoran: 11:53
I was a.
Mark Worster: 11:54
Technician, right?
Mark Worster: 11:56
So this is ten years into the business and we’re rolling, you know, 4 or 5,000,000in revenue, 300,000 out on a line of credit. Bank of America comes in and says, you know, as part of the covenants of this, we need to see financials. We haven’t been asking for them for two years, but we’d like to see them. So I gave them the financials and you know, I don’t know. And they said, wow, we’d like our $300,000 back in 30 days.
John Corcoran: 12:24
I like.
Mark Worster: 12:25
The reason I’m out on this is because I don’t have cash, right?
John Corcoran: 12:29
Yeah.
Mark Worster: 12:29
Oh, that was one of the best lessons in how to run a business because they put me in forbearance, which is a nice way of saying they put your, you know, your junk in a vise and squeeze it until you get as much money out as they possibly can.
John Corcoran: 12:44
So you had.
Mark Worster: 12:44
To like it.
John Corcoran: 12:45
Like a payment. Plan or.
Mark Worster: 12:46
$2,500 for the person to come in and do that, right. So my therapist, I just started therapy because I was, you know, was some stuff from childhood. And so I just started therapy. Never saw a therapist before. And luckily, this dude had been on a yoga retreat. And I’d never heard anything like that. Right.
John Corcoran: 13:04
Who had been on a yoga retreat? Your therapist.
Mark Worster: 13:06
Who? You know. Woo woo. It’s like yoga. I know nothing about it.
John Corcoran: 13:11
Who had been on the yoga tree? Your therapist?
Mark Worster: 13:13
My therapist, your therapist. Okay.
Mark Worster: 13:14
And I’m. You know, I’m in there. I’m in a session. I’m telling them about all the stress and the anxiety about having to pay 30 $300,000 in 30 days, and I don’t know what I’m going to do.
Mark Worster: 13:23
He’s like, dude, your head’s going to explode. So why don’t you go for a week-long retreat at this yoga center, which is? It’s a place called Kripalu. It’s in the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts. It’s magic.
John Corcoran: 13:37
Did your family, your brother, everyone, like it? Wait, wait a second. We are owed $300,000 and you’re going to go off on a yoga retreat. What the hell are you doing?