Mark C. Thompson
Leadership Coach; Author, Success Built to Last and ADMIRED
Mark Thompson is an expert on executive leadership, business strategy, and innovation who has spent over 25 years leading teams and building companies from the ground up. He delivers actionable, valuable and practical advice for leaders at all levels of an organization.
New York Times bestselling author Mark C. Thompson is a leadership coach for the world’s fastest growing, most innovative companies—from LYFT CEO & Cofounder Logan Green, Pinterest Cofounder Evan Sharp and World Bank CEO Dr. Jim Kim, to founders Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Tony Robbins and Charles Schwab, for whom he served as the world’s first CXO—Chief Customer Experience Officer.
Forbes Magazine says Mark has the ‘Midas’ touch as a sought after coach, speaker, and venture investor. His New York Times bestselling books include: ADMIRED: 21 Ways to Double Your Value; Now Build a Great Business; and Success Built to Last – Creating a Life that Matters, Mark is also an Innovation Leadership columnist for Forbes.com, Inc.com, and FastCompany.com. His most recent bestseller ADMIRED is a primer on how the world’s “Most Admired Companies” achieve long-term success and growth as well as the qualities that are common to “Most Admired Leaders”.
Mark was Charles Schwab’s former Chief of Staff and Chief Customer Experience Officer, and the Executive Producer of Schwab.com which today has assets over $3 Trillion. He is a co-founding advisor of Sir Richard Branson’s Entrepreneurship Centres.
Mark is a founding advisor of the Stanford Realtime Venture Design Lab, and served as a visiting scholar at his alma mater, Stanford University, and adjunct faculty at the World Economic Forum, World Business Forum, and John F. Kennedy University.
A successful venture capitalist over the last two decades, Mark was as an early investor in companies like Facebook and Netflix. He was also a founding board member of Esurance. He has been a Board Member for many well-known technology, biotech and retail companies, including Best Buy, Korn Ferry, and Interwoven (now owned by HP). He was the Chairman of the Board for Rioport, which popularized the MP3 player prior to the iPod.
Among Mark’s passions are music and Broadway. Mark serves as a founding Board of Directors member for Smule, the top music app company on iTunes which has over 125 million users worldwide. As a Broadway producer, Mark’s plays have earned ten nominations and five Tony Awards.
Most Admired Leadership: Nobody Does it Alone! Building Great Teams
Mark shares insights into the top leadership qualities of the world’s Most Admired Leaders according to the most engaged employees. In a broad survey of over 10,000 employees in 110 countries, Mark’s research team identified the top eight leadership traits that people want from their leaders. He presents case studies from many of these leaders including his experience working directly with several of them. He outlines how the Most Admired leaders have achieved such enduring success over decades and how they consistently:
- Recruit, Build and Retain the highest performing teams
- Create a corporate culture that Inspires loyalty and engagement
- Face adversity and bounce back from failures
- Challenge themselves and their teams year after year to outdo themselves and achieve continuous and long-term growth
- Learn what their MVP’s value and what drives them in their lives and work
Leaders of the world’s Most Admired Companies know that the customer experience IS the brand! Customer engagement is not about transactions, it’s about RELATIONSHIPS—acting as though you’d put your own money on the line in your customer’s company. If you were investing in your customer’s company, you’d think differently about how you deal with them and fight for their success like it was your own. Mark brings many examples of how the most admired brands approach customer engagement and set the standard for lasting customer relationships in their industries. These companies understand four key components that lead to lasting customer relationships:
- Every touchpoint that a customer encounters is defining your brand
- Delivering a consistent experience regardless of point of contact or method of communication
- A high level of Employee Engagement is critical to achieving Customer Engagement
- Knowing what your MVPs (both customers and employees) value is key to developing long term relationships, and driving loyalty
Fanatic Sales Growth - Success Built to Last Growing from Good to Great to ADMIRED
In this high-impact keynote, Mark reveals the critical drivers behind long-term sales growth and enduring success. He lays out the key factors that differentiate companies that are Good, those that become Great and those that are ADMIRED.
- How world-class teams generate unstoppable growth
- Avoiding common mistakes that cut sales in half
- 5 Tools To Double Sales: Positioning-Pain-Promise-Proof-Planning
- The customer service strategies that drive customer retention
- Discovering what your market craves and getting ahead of the curve
Disruptive innovation is happening all around us in almost every industry. “Disruptive Innovation” can mean: disrupting your competitors, customer relationships, internal processes, reward systems, management strategy, the status quo and “last century thinking”. But how do you create a culture of innovation that enables a big company to think and act like a small one? Mark shares insights on world-class companies that struggled with change—some that failed to adjust to meet changing markets and others that reinvented their business models and transformed entire industries with disruptive innovations. Mark answers several questions that will help you understand how to:
- Enable your teams to not only embrace change, but lead business transformation
- Operationalize innovation while still meeting the demands of Wall Street
- Remove the fear of failure for disruptive ideas
- Create incentive systems that reward those that challenge “business as usual”
- Empower employees at every level to make change happen
