Featured Speaker on 11.13.2019

John Mark Shaw is a business development consultant with over 25 years of successful entrepreneurial, executive leadership and management experience.  John helps entrepreneurs and business leaders launch and grow their businesses by developing a vision for where they want to be and a strategic plan to get there.  He works with small and medium sized businesses across a broad spectrum of industries, and specializes in the areas of strategic business development, branding and marketing, capital raising, sales growth, guest experience/product quality improvement, cost reduction, startups, turnarounds, operational systems development, team building, entrepreneurial and executive leadership development, and cultural & organizational development.

John’s current and recent client projects include business development consulting for a hedge fund, a luxury branding and digital marketing firm, a law firm, an accounting firm, a craft brewery, a luxury lifestyle magazine, a high end barber and line of grooming products, and several clients in the restaurant and hospitality space – a high end country club rebranding, a new fast casual restaurant concept launch and opening, a business turnaround where he successfully brought a cash-negative restaurant into profitability, and a successful restaurant group relaunch and rebranding where he focused on marketing, PR, guest experience improvement and sales growth and successfully turned year over year sales decline into 10%+ YOY growth.

Prior to founding his own firm, John served as co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Hill Country Hospitality, where he built a $30 million company from the ground up.  Prior to Hill Country, he served as COO of David Bouley's Bouley International, GM for Danny Meyer's Tabla & Bread Bar, and VP of Operations for Reed Hearon's Nice Ventures in San Francisco, among other senior leadership positions. John also spent several years developing his marketing and branding skills as an account executive and creative director at a boutique advertising agency in NYC.  John is a native New Yorker and received his undergraduate degree at Stanford University, a master's degree from University of Southern California, an advanced executive & life coaching certification from the Life Mastery Institute and was ordained as an Interfaith Minister at The New Seminary.  John lives in Jersey City with his wife Donna, daughter Paloma, and puppy Daphne.

“If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else.”

YOGI BERRA