Mark Steiner is the co-founder and CEO of GigSalad. As chief visionary, he leads the company’s business and marketing strategy, focusing on building a strong customer-centric team and connecting with strategic partners. His career in the entertainment industry has spanned more than thirty years, including a decades-long stint booking high-level talent for performing arts centers, festivals, concerts, and corporate events through the agency he founded. Mark is the recipient of the Goodwill Games Peace Prize for a product he created to teach racial equality to children.
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Show Notes:
- Mark Steiner currently resides in Springfield, MO.
- He moved there in 2004 with his family.
- Mark and his wife first met in New York City.
- The habit that has led to his success in life has been being habitual all of his life.
- Over time he has figured out how to do life.
- Every day he acknowledges how he is doing in all points of his life.
- Over the last few years, he has lost some weight by being in control of the food he consumes.
- He has started to begin his day in a contemplative way. (yoga, exercise, meditation, or prayer)
- Mark is constantly asking himself, “Am I in a good place.”
- If he is not then he immediately in changing his mindset.
- What is GigSalad?
- It is an event marketplace.
- It is the place where service providers go to find the services that they need.
- They are there to facilitate the relationship between the service providers and the event planners.
- The leads on the site are distributed directly to the service providers.
- They launched the site in 2007 but were in the beta stage a few years before that.
- They currently have a second office in Wilmington, NC that is run by his partner.
- Once they hired a full-time programmer, Gigsalad really started to take off.
- GigSalad all began from Steiner Talent Group that he started as a middle broker between big national talent and event planners.
- He had local people that started to reach out to him about representing them as well.
- Mark decided to start a website to service local people.
- Since that time GigSalad has taken off and become number 1 in the marketplace.
- This is a very niche market and there is only one other main competitor in the market.
- When they started the company, they did not take on investors instead, they chose to grow organically and just put the money back into the company to grow it.
- It was not until 2011 that they started taking an income from GigSalad because they closed the other companies they were running to focus only on GigSalad.
- Mark has always been more of a risk taker and a dreamer so he was constantly having to be brought down out of the clouds.
- Overall he had trust that it would all work out and that is key in any business.
- You don’t have to take on venture capital to be successful with your business.
- If you just bootstrap your company, you can retain more of the business.
- This is the route that GigSalad took.
- Bringing on employees in the organization is the hard part.
- It can be hard to let go but vital to the growth of the organization.
- When hiring employees, you have to establish a culture for your company early on.
- They have a very strong culture in the hiring process.
- They introduce them to that culture to see how that person fits in with what is already established
- Mark Steiner always trusts his gut feeling.
- It has never failed him and never let him down.
- Early on the hiring process was focused on two key questions:
- Do I like you?
- Do I trust you?
- Since then it has really evolved into a bigger process.
- GigSalad now has around 600 categories and they rely heavily on reviews for the service providers.
- They just recently released an app for event planners.
- They are the only website for some of these acts.
- In 3-5 years Mark Steiner sees GigSalad as:
- A company with more than 115,000 members.
- The go-to company with everyone from each category.
- A top-of-thought brand.
Mark Steiner’s Recharge Round
- Share with us how you believe your mindset affects your life. He chose to be positive. Decided he is going to be positive all the time. Mindset is everything
- What do you do daily to bring Energy into your life? A choice. A switch. One thing feeds the rest. Eat well, drink well. Eat well, sleep well, live well
- Share the number one connection that has made the biggest impact on your life. Steve Tetrault (his business partner and best friend)
- What advice has Influenced you the most in your life? Life is short and make it count
- Recommend a book and share why you love it.
Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life - Define in one sentence or less, what legacy you want to leave on the world. “Leave my children better people”
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