Interview with Climb Online CEO Mark Wright

Important lessons we can learn from a digital marketer

A few days ago, I recently thought of reaching out to the CEO of Digital Marketing Company. So, I had Mark Wright on my Linkedin connections, so I directly messaged him on there.

I had a great opportunity to host an interview with the CEO of Climb Online, Mark Wright. As an individual, who is currently studying Marketing, I wanted to hear his perspectives regarding his entrepreneurial success and what advice he would give. I was amazed that he responded back to my message. I would like to thank Mark for joining me on this interview.

For those of you who may not be familiar with him, Mark Wright is the CEO and Founder of Climb Online, which is the UK’S fastest-growing digital agency and they scale brands, such as Tiktok, HP, Emirates, MADE and amongst other famous brands. I decided to write up a transcript of what we talked about into my article so other people can hear about his success and the advice he has to offer!

1) Can you tell me a bit about yourself?

My name is Mark Wright, I am an Austrailian Citizen; born in Austrailia, I moved to England in 2012 when i was backpacking. I am a digital marketing expert and i founded one of the UK’s largest digital marketing company. I am also well known for being Lord Sugar’s business partner and for winning the TV show The Apprentice (2014 series). I was Listed on Forbes under 30s, as the most successful 30 year old in marketing. In my spare time, I own 7 businesses and I employ over 100 people and so I don’t have so much spare time anymore, but I love spending time with friends and family like most people do and i love exercising; just bought a new bike and going on my bike alot and learning how to cook; I love watching formula 1 cars on TV. My passion is business, I absolutely love business and in the times when I am not working, you’ll generally find me studying businesspeople, I love reading books, watching movies and watching documentaries about business people.

2) How did you gain an interest in becoming an entrepreneur and the CEO of your company Climb Online?

Well, when I was a young boy, my mum and dad owned their own businesses. My mum owned a hairdressing salon and my dad owned a car garage & Mechanics. When i was a kid, i would listen to them at the dinner table and all they would talk about is business and their employees and customers and how they were going to get products. So, your parents leave a huge impact on you and when I always saw my parents doing and talking about business and from that i wanted to become my own boss, do my own business and become an entrepreneur; but i never knew in what business. I tried lots of different things like working in a restaurant and working in a sportstore and doing lots of things.When you find your right career, it’s like you are finding the right partner, you get the right feeling and you don’t need to keep checking the time on the clock.

When I found digital marketing, it was the first job i was really good at and it was the first one when i didnt need to check the time on the clock.

3) Did you network with a lot of people who are also CEOs and Businesspeople?

Well, it is not so much networking, what I really got good at which has really completely changed my life is changing the people i surround myself within my personal life. They say “you become a reflection of five people you spend the most time with”. If you look at people I surrounded myself with when i was younger and with the people, I surround myself with now, people who are my best friends are all business owners, they are all wealthy, they all work in their own businesses and they all look after their health, they have big goals and dreams. What that forces me to do is feel good about who I am and it forces me to level up constantly and keep reaching to the next level. If you have people around you who aren't reaching for goals and who aren't pushing themselves and who aren't working hard, you’ll start to drift away to those people.

It's very important that with people who are around you force you to be better all the time.

4) Were there any times in your life where you faced any struggles (job or study related) and how did you overcome them?

They say in business, the average business owner has a crisis every 3 months and that crisis varies in size and that could be your star employee leaving, that could be a big customer leaving and whatever, crisis happen. I have had a lot of struggles in my career and in my life where I failed on a project and I've lost a big customer and I’ve been told I've not been good for doing something and there's so many of those. The best successful people generally have the most value and the reason why people never make to where they want to be in life or in business is that they keep changing lines and there's a famous saying “how do you get to the front of the buffet line of life, you get in the back and stay there until you get to the front”.

The important thing is to have resillence and perserve even when you at the end of the line; you continue through the obstacles in the way to get to the front.

5) Who do you see as your inspiration and why?

I take inspiration from a lot of places more than one. I’ve got mentors like Lord Sugar, which have helped me in business, I have had other mentors that I have paid for and there have been my mentors who have been my friends throughout my life and coached me in different areas of business. I also look up to my mum and dad greatly and I try to make them proud and do great things by them. But also a lot of people rely on me, a lot of employees and I have younger siblings and my job is to provide now and so I've got pressure from that point of view and for people who are responsible for inspiring my employees, my managers and all of that stuff who rely on me for their success.

So, my inspiration is from that people that are close to me and people who I love and also now I am inspired and driven my responsibilities.

6) Your company Climb Online, what makes Climb online different from other digital marketing companies?

The biggest difference in any business is the owner. If you show me a good business, i’ll show you a good owner. Show me a bad business, I’ll show you a bad owner. The first biggest difference is me; Climb Online firstly has a brilliant name and I always tell people you should call your business what it does on the tin. My business helps businesses with generating leads in sales online, we build websites, do social media campaigns, paid search campaigns, we help companies get more customers and we change a lot of peoples lives by getting them more customers. Climb online obviously started from me working in the digital marketing agency and I worked in one of the biggest digital marketing agencies in the world, they treated their customers and staff terribly and I was a small employee I was a junior employee one of 500, I really hated the way they treated everyone.

So I thought I can do this better and not do the same thing as them; making better choices and having a better working environment for my company.

7) How do you see your company moving forward?

I think all of the good businesses could see around the corner they are constantly innovating and adding new products into their company. The worst thing a business owner can say we've all always done it this way, this is how we have always done it and well always do it this way. But, you must be on the lookout for new technologies for new trends in the market and always be listening to your customers and listening to the market. For my industry, Marketing, the biggest thing that's changing is analytics; business analytics and consumer behaviour. For example, we have scaled brands like Tiktok with serving paid advertising campaigns and social media promotion.

Constantly adapting to change and not being afraid to change are important for successful businesses.

8) What advice would you give to others who are entrepreneurs, university students and CEOS?

The biggest thing is if you really want to become successful in any area, you've got to become an expert and there are when people want to work with the best. People want to work with experts and your job is if you're going to become a business owner or an entrepreneur, your responsibilities to your customers is to be the best in what you do. You become good through the knowledge and experience and then you need to become well known for what you do and becoming a person of influence, writing a book, creating a podcast or speaking on stage, whatever needs to be done, to be successful, you need to be great in what you do, you need to be well known for doing it.

If you look at any entrepreneur, that's been super successful, they've combined both of those things.

Interview highlights

To summarize, things Mark found useful to his career were: being inspired by the close people he were surrounded by, he was open to learning new skills and activities. In this highlights video, Mark spoke about his dyslexia and he views it as a gift and it makes him creative and successful; he doesn't use it as an excuse, he only looks for opportunities. For his business to become successful, he focused on being customer-centric, learning from past experiences and finding the right career has made the person that he is today.