Mark King

He made a huge leadership mark with two well known global brands and then ventured into a space he wasn’t expecting.  

Host Kraig Kann goes one-on-one with Mark King, the CEO of Taco Bell since 2019 as Tracks To Success brings you a fast paced chat with a man who’s known for innovative marketing that includes a unique partnership with Kanye West that changed the industry rule book.

From TaylorMade to Adidas and now to Taco Bell, King has stories to share about his climb and the people who’ve made a difference.  His insight that will help any business executive or entrepreneur. 

He’s well known, well respected and well versed.   And, as you’ll hear, he owes a lot to his daughter for the push to take on a major role in the food industry where he has big plans to elevate yet another brand. 

Transcript

1 (4s):
Welcome to tracks to success brought to you by presentation partners. This is the podcast that brings you inspiring people and they're inspiring stories. How did they find their way to the top and how can their path help you do the same? Here's your host network, broadcaster, executive and entrepreneur. Craig can

0 (25s):
<inaudible>

2 (30s):
Today on tracks to success. You'll hear from one of the world's leading businessmen, a man who's made a name for himself in sports and ventured outside to sportswear and the food industry. He's the current CEO of taco bell. He's the former president of Adidas North America. He's a former president and CEO at TaylorMade, and he's been named an executive of the year, a person of the year, and one of the 50 most influential people in sports business. Plus he's been a featured guest on two TV series that you may have seen.

2 (1m 12s):
His name is Mark King, his inspiring story, and an all new edition of tracks to success starts now.

3 (1m 25s):
Well, it's an absolute pleasure, Mark. Thanks so much. It's great to have you with me really is

4 (1m 31s):
Well, Craig, I, we haven't spoken in a while, but this is, this is exciting for me as well.

3 (1m 36s):
Well, terrific. Let's get right into it. Let's start with today. Taco bell is a place that we've, we've all been to most of us anyway, and we have a pretty good idea of what's on the menu. But what I want to know is what's your menu, not about what you eat, but what's the day like for a CEO of taco bell?

4 (1m 55s):
Well, it, it it's well, if you work at a consumer products company, Craig, it's always the same in that is you got to have great products. You got to have great marketing and you gotta be able to take those products to the marketplace. So those are kind of the mechanics. And then it's really all about people, your own people, getting people to think about things, get excited to execute the plans. And then the customers in this case, most of the customers are franchisees. So it's, it's dealing with franchisees. So it's product, it's marketing, it's execution and it's, and it's people. Those are that's every day.

3 (2m 36s):
That is every day. Now you're in charge of brand strategy and company performance. Like most CEOs. That's a pretty big responsibility. As we know for those who might not understand the topic or the, or the term brand strategy, help people, what does that entail to you?

4 (2m 53s):
Well, I think, you know, it's, it's kind of funny that over time companies have become brands, especially when you're a product company. And so we don't really talk much about the company. We talk about the brand and brands try to establish an emotional connection with their target consumer. So there's a reason that you want to go to a taco bell outside of delicious craveable food. And that can be lifestyle that can be values. That can be a purpose driven company. And so taco bell is this amazing brand in the QSR space, which is quick service restaurant.

4 (3m 35s):
For those of you don't know that term QSR. And, but we really try to provide a lifestyle experience. And we do that through Instagram, social media. If you see our ads, they're really, they're, they're very breakthrough in terms of their creativity and how they try to tell the story of food of lifestyle. So I think the brand is, is what people really are attracted to.

3 (4m 6s):
Let's go back in time way before taco bell. Let's talk childhood for a second. Where did you call home? What type of kid were you? Did you see this coming?

4 (4m 16s):
No, no. First of all, I'm from green Bay, Wisconsin grew up there in the, you know, it was born in 1959 I'm 60 years old and was a big packer fan and was, I love sports and you don't have to be much of an athlete to be able to play in Northern Wisconsin on any team. So I played football and baseball and basketball, like every kid in that generation, right. If you were not an athlete, played all the sports and I just loved sports and he didn't really care much for school, although I did. Okay. And then I got a golf scholarship. So I played golf in college, went to Northern Illinois university for a couple of years, finished at the university in green Bay.

4 (4m 57s):
And then I had worked for a golf professional in the summertime. That was one of the, kind of the cofounders of the TaylorMade golf company. I graduated from college in 81. And then, you know, I, I was hired even as a sales rep early on in the tailor-made story and moved to California. So I was, I was an athlete or I thought I was an athlete Craig, then, you know, and I, and I wasn't really focused on any career. I didn't, I just wanted to play sports and I was good enough to play college golf, which was a great experience for me. And the rest was kind of locked. I would say,

3 (5m 33s):
Well, play in college. Golf is not an easy task, especially today, 34 years at TaylorMade. Now, I don't know if you saw yourself being a business executive or the path that you took, but you went from territory sales to president, to CEO and you led the company. Taylor made it become the most profitable golf company in the world. The question is how, because you don't just snap your fingers and have that happen.

4 (5m 59s):
Well, I think there's a lot Craig to that question, but don't let me just try to summarize it this way. I, first of all, I was a golfer, so I just had this really great passion for the game of golf and everything that came with it. And Gary Adams, who was the founder of the TaylorMade golf company said, you know, I want to build a company by golfers for golfers. So really an authentic golf, right? If you remember back in the early eighties or even the seventies, the sporting goods companies like Wilson and Spalding and Mizuno, they really were the top of, you know, they were making most of the golf equipment and then you started to have TaylorMade and paying and Calloway. And so we were one of those authentic companies that only made golf equipment.

4 (6m 43s):
So I had this great passion for golf. That would be number one. Then as I was selling products for 20 years, I just had this, you know, really fell in love with them. The industry of golf from Pete, meet media, people like yourself to retail customers, to touring professionals. So I fell in love with the business of golf. And then in 1999, when Adidas bought the company, Mmm, they fired the CEO and they offered me the job as president and a couple of years later as the CEO and what we did, Craig, is we focused on a couple of things. We focused on making performance equipment for the best players in the world.

4 (7m 25s):
And that was what we were going to market. And that was our story. If you want to play the best you played TaylorMade, we were going to reconnect with golfers and that's top golfers college golfers club professionals, tour professionals. And then the last thing that I think really, and we can talk more about this, but we said we wanted to go faster and introduce more products and speed up the life cycles. And I think that's really what changed the industry and allowed us to change the trajectory of the company.

3 (7m 56s):
Mark, I do leadership communication workshops, and I talked to a lot of sales professionals who need to learn the brand story and sell it. You started in territory sales at the end of the day, Mark

4 (8m 6s):
Aren't we all

3 (8m 8s):
Sales professionals, no matter what we do, isn't that accurate?

4 (8m 12s):
I think whether you're the CEO, the CFO, the chief brand officer, you're a sales person, you're selling whatever it is that that you have to sell to whomever your customer or audience is. And I think one of the things that allowed me to be successful, not just as a sales person or a sales executive, but as an executive of companies, because understanding that the reason you open the door every day is to sell something. And whether it's golf clubs to retailers or athletic footwear, to retailers or tacos, to people who are hungry, it's about selling products or selling whatever it is that whatever function that you have.

4 (8m 53s):
So to me that the basic skills that you learn being a sales person, are you, you carry throughout your career.

3 (9m 1s):
I agree with that. I agree with that. You talked about connection and moving faster. What do you mean by connection connection with a customer?

4 (9m 9s):
What does that well, I, I, so look, I think customers have, they have all kinds of options and more options today than they've ever had before. And so how does a customer end up choosing one product over another? And it's usually there's, it could be performance. It could be the cosmetics or the look of the product, but at a, at a bigger level, it's you relate to that brand. You, you, Sergio Garcia represented TaylorMade and he was a cool factor. And now you look at the TaylorMade brand, you've got the best players in the world, so you want to associate with that brand. And so you pick a brand and then you choose the product that fits you.

4 (9m 51s):
Yeah. So I think that's a really important thing. The second thing is, and I think what's really changed in the last 20 years in business is the speed at which the markets are moving. And, and when I started in golf in the eighties life cycles for three to five years, and sometimes even longer than that and what we did at TaylorMade in the early two thousands as we started to launch products every year, because consumers have a real appetite for things that are new and exciting and different. And if you can do that, consumers will buy your products all the time. They don't necessarily want to wait three to five years to buy one. So we really sped up the life cycles and brought out new innovations and gave consumers options to choose.

4 (10m 36s):
And whether it was cosmetics or performance tour, endorsed store, game improvement. So we just kept bringing more products. And that's really what fueled the growth.

3 (10m 46s):
34 years today is almost unheard of in a company. My dad spent 38 years at the same bank and in Chicago, and today you just don't find that 34 years of TaylorMade from TaylorMade to Adidas. As you talked about president of Adidas, North America, a big responsibility, a highly, highly competitive industry. So how did you focus Mark? Not just for yourself, but for Adidas on standing out, how do you separate yourself? What was your goal there?

4 (11m 16s):
Well, I, you know, the, the, the, it, I think it starts with a big aspiration and I can remember when I went to Adidas in 2014, the brand was, was really not very popular with young athletes or it's and believe it or not, Nike under Armour, Adidas are as much lifestyle brands as they are athletic brands. And so we did not have any cool factor at all. Well, we needed to do something to, to break through the clutter. And we were fortunate enough to, to form a partnership with Kanye West and, and we allowed him to create this franchise called the Yeezy brand.

4 (11m 60s):
And it had no Adidas brand Mark on it. It was only the, it was called the Yeezy it's still. And w in 2015, we launched it. It was, we didn't do any business at all. And within four or five years, the brand, it was doing almost a billion dollars just in that one category. But what that did, Craig, is that allowed us to break through the clutter and to make the brand cool for young kids. And so I think all brands have to figure out a way to break through the clutter. And, you know, sometimes it's performance. Sometimes it's an athlete. In this case, it was Kanye West. Now there was a lot more to that success story than just Kanye West, but he was really what kind of jumped started the brand

3 (12m 43s):
Now, taco bell young brands. Is there any parallel between TaylorMade Adidas and now this, and I, I'm trying to figure out if there could be, there has to be, there has to be some, something that got you excited about this and

4 (12m 59s):
Parallel somehow, Craig, it's amazing. When I first got the call, I had been auto work and retired from Adidas for about a year and I get this call. Would you be interested in the taco bell job? And my first reaction was, no, I love eating at taco bell, but I don't really know anything about the restaurant business. And then I called my daughter or she's 24 years old. She works for a marketing company. And I said, what do you think about taco bell? Well, she loves taco bell. She goes, dad, that would be like the coolest thing ever. So that got me excited, but she said, dad, they do so many amazing things with their brand through social media, through connection to their consumer base.

4 (13m 41s):
And you know, in the QSR space, there's really good companies, but there's few brands, you know, emotionally connected to their, to their followers that, and taco bell is that brand. So then I got interested and then the more I, I researched it, Craig and talked to people, amazing opportunity here. It, we, we say here, taco bell is the brand beyond QSR. So it's not just about, you know, craveable food at low prices. We had a, we had an experience right when I started about seven months ago out in Palm Springs, where there, we took over a hotel in Palm Springs and we had 400 crazy taco bell.

4 (14m 26s):
People come in for four days of like, like a spring break party. And, and it really kind of was the manifestation of this brand. And that's really what got me excited about how far you could connect to people through this cult-like brand taco bell. Second thing is it is a consumer products company. So we have R and D. We had food scientists, engineers that put together products, big marketing campaigns to launch products into the marketplace. And we have big growth plans when I came the brands about $11 billion in system sales. And we now have a big aspiration of getting the brand to $20 billion over the next half a dozen years.

4 (15m 12s):
So I get excited about selling products and growing businesses and affecting communities and lives. And this is just an amazing opportunity, but the similarities Craig between product creation, marketing, launching products, servicing consumers, honestly, it's not that much different than Adidas or made.

3 (15m 35s):
Did you take anything from Kanye West? Did you, did you use anything that he shared with you that could help make brands cool and all of that, especially the one you're with now?

4 (15m 45s):
Yeah, I think so. I think so, Craig, I think it was the biggest lesson. And for those listening out there, I think there's two ways to, to, to grow a business. One is to take the current business model or the way you do things and switch. If it's a mature business, it's pretty much like everybody else and you try to do it better every year. And to me, that would be called incrementalism, right? Hey, we're going to, we're going to get better. We're going to learn more. We're gonna learn from the year before we're going to apply that. And we're going to grow one, two, three, four, 5% a year. The other way is to be completely disruptive to, to go against the status quo and to do something that people at initial thought are gonna look at it and say, that is never going to work.

4 (16m 30s):
Think of this great, think of a marketer that would say we're going to take Kanye West, who has nothing to do with sports. We're going to let them create and design a product line that would have no Adidas branding on it. And we would, and we would market that under the Adidas brand. Yeah, no marketer would ever do that. And it completely changed the dynamics of one of the biggest sports brands in the world. So I think disruption doing things that, that the industry doesn't expect. Perfect. That's what I learned from Kanye West

3 (17m 4s):
And expanding to new audiences that you might not reach otherwise. I mean, that's what everybody is trying to do is grow awareness and reach new audiences. Mark King is our guest on this edition of tracks to success, tracks to success, brought to you by presentation partners, visual storytellers, passionate about connecting presenters with their audience. Mark. I'm sure that you have spoken to many groups as a CEO. You get a lot of audience, maybe students, young leaders, let's talk about the advice you might share about maybe sales or connecting with customers or leadership. How do you get people to follow you? What, what do you tell

4 (17m 40s):
Young people? Well, I, I think the biggest thing that I tell you, young people and I have two girls and my wife has two girls. The biggest advice I could give you. And I think it's, it's what helped me is you have to do something you love. And like, for me, I loved golf and I wanted to be a player and I thought I could be. And I quickly found out that, you know, when I left green Bay, I wasn't really very good compared to the rest of the world, but it still allowed me that, that passion and love for golf allowed me to have an amazing life and career in the business of golf. So the first thing that I would tell people is you gotta find something that you love and that's not easy, Craig.

4 (18m 24s):
I mean, you talk to most young people like my youngest daughter, she doesn't really know what she loves, but I think you need to be in search of, of really what you love. Second thing is you just got to really be good at what you do. So when you pick something, you shouldn't worry about the next job or you just need to, the world is about specialization today. And if you're really good at something, you can have a career. So really focused on being the best you can be. And then the third, and this is the hardest thing in the world today is to just slow down. And I think so many, so many young people today want to want to really accelerate their career in jump every one in two years to a new job.

4 (19m 11s):
The problem with that, Greg is after three or four promotions in seven or eight years, you really haven't learned as much as you should about business, about people, about collaboration, about failure. And you get to a point then and you stall because you really haven't put in, put in the work. You know, I, we, we had an event with Kareem Abdul Jabbar joined us and he said, the biggest problem with high school kids going straight to the NBA is they miss two things. They learn. They, they miss out on learning how to play basketball and they miss out on learning how to win. And, and I think that's really great advice for a young business person is just take your time and learn as much as you can be great at what you do and love what you do.

4 (19m 58s):
And I think the future will take care of itself.

3 (20m 1s):
I tell people all the time, chase money later in life, chase experiences early in life, as many as you can get, and don't be afraid to fail, stretch yourself, get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Those things are all important. I bet your kids absolutely loved the fact that you've been on a couple of shows like undercover boss and the apprentice. What was that like? That had to be so cool.

4 (20m 27s):
Well, being on the apprentice, if you've seen it, it wasn't much of an appearance. I remember standing with Trump in, at his golf course and I said, what are we going to do? And he said, well, we're just gonna, you know, like walk side by side and talk and we're going to talk about business. And as soon as the camera went, he stood in front of me and they never saw me again. So that really, really wasn't a great experience. But, but undercover boss really was Craig. I, I worked in six different parts of the company. This was at TaylorMade and it was amazing to see how hard people work, how underappreciated they really are, how little things like somebody like the CEO or a manager walking around and knowing their name and saying, hello, how much that means to them.

4 (21m 22s):
Yeah. The, the biggest learning that I had was how bad corporate communication is. You say something in a board room by the time it gets to the executives and then the management, and then the people who do all the work, the messages. So watered down that no wonder people are frustrated working at companies. So I gained just an immense appreciation for how hard people work and how little they're recognized and how bad communication. So I've spent really the next 10 years after that, you know, trying to do a better job at those things.

3 (21m 56s):
Yeah. You know, a lot of people don't like to speak about themselves and they don't like to brag about themselves and they don't like accolades from other people, but I'm going to throw a few out there in 2017. Footwear news puts you number one on their power. 100 list in 2016, you were named person of the year you've been named executive of the year. That's pretty cool stuff. So what in your mind, if you can go ahead and talk about yourself a little bit is the why behind those accolades?

4 (22m 25s):
Well, you know, thanks for saying those things that, that, you know, gave me goosebumps. So it's hard to hear that sometimes, like you said, but I would say this, Craig, I really take pride in getting up early in the morning. I know that's going to sound ridiculous, but I've all I've learned as a little kid. If I get up early and start working before everybody else, I would have an advantage over them. So I get up early every day and I go to work to this day. I still get up here to taco bell. I'm the pretty much the first one in the building. That's six, six 30 in the morning. So I think getting at it is, is really important.

4 (23m 7s):
I think dreaming about extraordinary things actually do happen because Greg, I think if you don't believe extraordinary things are going to happen. They're not going to. So I I've always been a big bold leader and put big, bold aspirations. I came here and they at taco bell and they had an aspiration to get to $15 billion. And I've, I bumped into 20 billion within six months because I think we can do that. And I think when you, when you make these big bold aspirations, then you have to think differently. You have to challenge the status. You have to do a Yeezy Kanye West type of, of product to be disruptive.

4 (23m 51s):
And it forces you to get to that big aspiration. It forces you to think differently. The third thing is, I think it can't be used. You just said it a few minutes to go, Craig failure is part of it. Not everything is going to work, but fail, figure out what you did wrong and do it again. And, and I, and I think this pursuit of extraordinary is really what drives people, organizations, brands, to do great things, but I don't think there's any secret formula. It's not the smartest. It's not the most clever it's you get up early, you'll work hard. You have a big aspiration. You're not afraid to fail.

4 (24m 32s):
And you understand that great things will they require disruption. So, you know, if you remember back to the white drive retailer made in, in 2011, now it was only a color change. But at that point, you know, the industry laughed at us thinking, why would you paint a driver white? So our market share went from 35% to 52% doing something the industry said couldn't be done. So I think it requires that kind of courage to be disruptive and courage to, you know, to, to not be afraid to fail.

3 (25m 5s):
Mark, I coach storytelling and leadership communication. As I mentioned, working with companies and people, you have spoken on some stages, you speak, you lead all the time. Can you share with our audience,

4 (25m 18s):
It's our listeners, the importance of presenting yourself, the importance of public speaking today? Well, I, Craig, I don't even know how to quantify it because if you want to have a big career, if you want to have a great company, if you want to do great things, you have to be able to storytell and I speak professionally and I've done a lot of it. And I use no, no slides, no overheads. No, no. I tell stories. And I tell stories using people's names and where they sat and what they wore so that you can paint a picture of what you want to communicate in somebody's mind.

4 (26m 5s):
And so details are extraordinarily important when you're storytelling, then there needs to be a, you know, really a moral to that story. What's the purpose of this story. And then that's needs to reinforce whatever your message is. And I think everything and I learned this long time ago, you can't overdress. You can underdress, but you can't really overdress. Totally. When you, when you step up in front of a group, it's what do you look like? How do you speak? Those things are so important, but though those are skills Craig, that without them big success in today's

3 (26m 44s):
World would be very, very difficult. Yeah. People size you up real quick. You know, the average attention span of a human beings, eight seconds. A lot of people don't don't realize that I had a guy one time in one of my seminars say, you know what? Eight seconds is a long time. I was a professional bull rider. I said, yeah, you got me there. I get that. But people size you up real quick. Couple of things, before I let you go, what does Mark King do outside of work? I know you, you do charity stuff. You're on the board at the V foundation. What motivates you outside the office?

4 (27m 17s):
Honestly, I'm S still a competitive golfer. I'm still thinking. And Craig, that one day, I'm going to find my game at the level that I thought I was going to find it at 18, but I just love to play golf and I love to play competitive golf. So I pursue, I pursue that. And honor, other than that, Craig, I'm a home body. I love going home. Being with my wife, watching our shows on TV, I'm a sports fan. So I mean, I can watch it thanks from bowling to the super bowl. So that's really it

0 (27m 45s):
For me.

1 (27m 50s):
In addition to hosting this podcast, Craig leads the cannon advisory group focused on elevating communication for companies and individuals, somebody consulting and powering team and individual workshops, mind altering webinars. And Greg's inspiring keynotes for your conference or company meeting. They're all on the menu of services. Can advisory helps companies clarify their message, helps professionals build and showcase their brand and helps everyone present their best selves. So if you're the leader of a team or company looking to give your employees a game changing one day experience or an individual who wants to become a speaker and presenter that gets other people talking visit Ken advisory.com.

1 (28m 39s):
And when you do connect, make sure to mention the tracks to success podcast, to receive a special discount on any of the can advisory services. That's can advisory.com. Now back to the interview,

0 (28m 53s):
<inaudible>

3 (28m 59s):
Tracks, the success is all about inspiring people and inspiring stories. So can you share what might help people understand that their personal tracks to success don't always go in a straight line and that they have some curves along the way based on your experience?

4 (29m 18s):
Well, I just think the TaylorMade made story of my 34 years there, Craig, that that really is, is, is what everybody should understand. TaylorMade was founded around 1980 and by the time time, the decade was over in 1990, TaylorMade was the largest golf equipment company in the world. Now it's a small industry. It was $300 million by 1990, 1991 tailor made change for, I mean the golf industry changed forever. LA Calloway introduced the big Bertha and for the next decade, TaylorMade struggle in Callaway became, you know, the Darlene of the industry. And it was an amazing company.

4 (29m 59s):
And I got the opportunity to do, to run the TaylorMade company in 2000. And I can tell you, Craig, nobody wanted that job because Callaway was so strong and Titlest was so strong in the ball and foot joy cat or footwear category with the foot joy brand, there was nowhere to grow and our business was the same size, 300 million, even though golf had boomed in the nineties. And, and in a decade, Craig, our business went from 300 million to one point $8 billion. And we completely reinvented an industry through hard work, through passion, through believing that we could do something extraordinary by changing the rules of the game. And so I think there's ups and there's downs and, and I don't think you can run away when things are tough.

4 (30m 45s):
You have to persevere and live through those and learn when it's your chance again, to do something extraordinary that you're ready for that moment.

3 (30m 55s):
Wow. I talk all the time about the difference between extraordinary and ordinary and giving people back something better than they expected when you gave it to them in the first place. It sounds like that's how you do it. This is the last thing for me. And I'd love to travel with you, watch your talks and hear you speak to people. But if you were in my class, I'm standing there with me and I said, Mark, I'm giving you the floor and we're focused on building influence and we're focused on becoming a better presenter and a leader. And I asked you to talk about the importance of building a brand and I'm not talking about a corporation, but I teach people to think of themselves as a corporation. So what advice would you give people about the importance of building an individual brand personal and professional?

3 (31m 41s):
And what would you say to them about the importance of getting noticed?

4 (31m 46s):
Well, I can't, I can't emphasize it enough. It's funny the guy that, you know, and, and I know together, Bob majority, who's still the CFO at TaylorMade. I used to tell him, and I still tell him this day, you need to get out of that building and build your brand because all of the great work that you've done here at TaylorMade really goes unnoticed in the bigger world because nobody knows who you are. And I think there's all kinds of opportunities to be out in your industry and speaking to be on different boards, even if their foundation boards, I don't really do public boards. I only do foundation boards, but the V foundation board for me to be able to go into a room <inaudible> and see who's at that table, Phil Knight and, and all of the people from ESPN and George Bodenheimer, those gives you connections.

4 (32m 38s):
And when people see you, they see you in that light and that's who you hang with. And that's your network of people that, and the influence that you have. So I think being out in the community and being involved and leaning into things is really important. I think having the last thing I would say, Craig is having a personal philosophy. I mean, if you want to have a brand, you have to stand for something. <inaudible> I decided a long time ago, I was going to stand for extraordinary happens. I'm not extraordinary. I really don't think I am, but I want to be a part of an extraordinary event, mobilizing people to think and challenge and experiment.

4 (33m 21s):
And you have a personal constitution. You have something you stand for, you lean in on as many things as possible, and great things will happen.

3 (33m 30s):
You've made the brand of this podcast a whole lot better. Mark King. I love the energy. I love the stories. I love the background. I've respected you for a long time in the industry. We've got some mutual ties, some mutual connections. This has been terrific. Thank you so much for sharing.

4 (33m 47s):
Well, thanks for having me on Craig. Great, great luck with the good luck with the podcast. I know you're going to do great things and I've been following you. So really appreciate being on.

3 (33m 58s):
Thank you,

2 (34m 9s):
Mark King has climbed the ladder at more than one stop on his track to success. His impact is far reaching and his reputation in the industry carries a whole lot of weight, which leads me to my one last thing. If you want to be an influencer, don't just find your way into an industry and work for a living. Find your way to become an industry thought leader. There's a big difference. Build a platform that you can call your very own and share those experiences along the way for the entire world to here, do those things and your tracks to success become a whole lot easier.

2 (34m 53s):
I'm Craig Cannes. Thanks for listening. We'll talk again.

1 (34m 59s):
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