Mark C. Thompson

CEO & Co-Founder of Virgin Unite & New York Times Best-selling Author

Mark C. Thompson

CEO & Co-Founder of Virgin Unite & New York Times Best-selling Author

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Biography

Mark C. 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.

Currently a highly sought after executive coach and venture investor, Forbes called Mark one of America’s Top Venture Investors with the ‘Midas Touch’. Mark was recently featured as one of the “World’s Top Executive Coaches” by the American Management Association and #1 Thought Leader on Innovation and Engagement. He was named one of the “Top 30 Communications Professionals for 2015” by Global Gurus. Mark advises top leaders in Fortune 500 and Global Fortune 1000 companies as well as the executive teams who are leading high-growth startup companies in Silicon Valley today.

A New York Times bestselling author whose 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 has worked side by side with three of the world’s most legendary disruptive innovators: Steve Jobs, Charles Schwab, and Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson. He brings insight from decades of experience with these great leaders and research on the culture of companies and brands that achieve the highest levels of employee engagement, customer loyalty, and continuous sales growth.

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 $2.4 Trillion. He is a co-founder of Sir Richard Branson’s Entrepreneurship Centres and an advisor to Virgin Unite Entrepreneurs.

Mark is a founding advisor of the Stanford Realtime Venture Design Lab and is a visiting scholar at his alma mater, Stanford University. He has served as faculty at the World Economic Forum and World Business Forum, is a member of the Clinton Initiative, and an executive coach for TED Fellows.

A successful venture capitalist over the last two decades, Mark was as an early investor in companies like Facebook, Netflix, and 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. He is an investor in Cancer Genetics, a leader in DNA-based diagnostics for clinical management of cancer treatment.

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 five Tony Awards and a total of ten Tony nominations, including Peter and the StarCatcher with Disney, and StickFly with Alicia Keys.

Mark lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Manhattan with two extraordinary women – his wife Bonita and their daughter Vanessa.

Speaker Videos

Speaking Reel

Three Ways the Most Admired Leaders Define Success

Four Most Admired Traits

Six Keys to Passionate Collaboration

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Speech Topics

Business Transformation: Drive Change and Create a Culture of Innovation

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

Building a Most Admired Brand through Customer and Employee Engagement

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 touch point 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

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

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

Testimonials

"We felt energized and positive after the event! We appreciated your taking the time to get to know Genentech, our current opportunities and challenges, and integrating those learnings into your presentation."

- Genentech

"Mark Thompson spoke at our global leadership conference and he’s been fantastic! His messages were on target and inspirational for our entire organization and our growth agenda as we look to accelerate our performance going forward. He had inspirational thoughts for the entire group that were well connected, logical and I think will help take us to the next level."

- The Hershey Company

"You did a great job, Mark. We enjoyed it very much. The franchisees loved it. Your energy was inspiring. Now I've got to go up and try to do better than what you did today, which is going to be a tough row to hoe! So, thank you very much. Great job. We really appreciate it."

- Budget Blinds

"I thought the presentation was full of energy and focus on the customer is always a key component on accomplishing our goals. I also thought you bring a simple but practical way in discussing goals by having big name affiliations and examples on challenges one faces and leaders find ways to overcome. The team was buzzing after the presentation."

- Palm Bay

"I really enjoyed reading Success Built to Last and was, of course, pleased about the prominent mentioning of Davos. I wonder whether we could take the lessons and experience which you summarize in the book and use them for an interactive discussion in our "CEOs only" session in Davos. Please let me know your ideas."

- World Economic Forum

"I'm coming from the TLMI conference where Mark Thompson just spoke to us about a lot of the macro trends that matter to all of us. And one of the things that I'm going to do as an action item right out of this is go back to my company where we have a thousand-customer event every year and invite Mark to come to that event. It's perfect for setting the context, stepping back from the day-to-day operational craziness that we all deal with and really look at how you build a business, build the idea of trust: build it throughout your organization, trust in your employees, trust in your customers, trust in yourself. I really would recommend Mark highly. It was a really, really great talk and I could see the excitement from everybody at the show."

- Jetrion at EFI

"Online Trading Academy is a franchise organization that teaches people to trade and invest; we are a global organization. We had Mark Thompson as our keynote speaker and a workshop presenter for our franchise owners and our entire franchise network. It's a big annual once-a-year event, everyone is there. Mark was amazing; he really inspired the crowd. Our theme was world class, and we needed a world-class speaker who could speak to world-class experiences and how companies become world class. Mark was a guy who really brought that message home, got people fired up, and more than that, it was like he fit with our team. It was like he was a member of the franchise family, a member of our community. So the fit was perfect. The workshop was great."

- Online Trading Academy

"I would strongly encourage anyone who is really looking to better their business to definitely move forward and have Mark speak at your company, at your events. We have a very powerful company and a very great culture, and I was amazed with the amount of love that came out of these breakout sessions and meetings. I think all of us at our company ended up finding out a lot more about ourselves, and how we can grow our business, just in the short period of time, the one day we got to spend with him. I would strongly recommend this to anyone who is looking to improve their business."

- Online Trading Academy

"Mark, the pleasure was all mine. Having you offer your insights and experience to our conference was first-class. These were the Chairman’s Club and President’s Club winners—the top performers from 1,000 financial advisors across the nation. The feedback was fabulous. Please look me up the next time you’re in town."

- Head of Retail of DundeeWealth, DWM Securities