Saturday, September 7, 2024
Mark Wright is living proof that when one door closes, another door opens.
In March 2022, Wright found himself at a professional crossroads. He had been a news anchor at KING 5 for 11 years. Given the opportunity, Wright said he might have worked at the NBC affiliate until he retired.
But management had other plans.
“They came to me 60 days before my contract was up and said we’re not renewing you and that was it,” said Wright, who has lived in Mukilteo with his college sweetheart and wife, Jamie, for 21 years.
“But I’ve discovered in my life and career that sometimes the best opportunities happen when other people make a decision that kicks you out of your comfort zone.” Wright had already made preparations for the possibility he might no longer be anchoring the evening news. “I knew that I needed to have a Plan B in case things didn’t work out, and so I studied for months to become a mortgage lender,” he said.
While many industries have little stability, Wright noted that broadcasting is one where people can get “unrenewed” for no reason. Someone may not like how you look, or can move on from you for any number of arbitrary reasons. “I’m just a big believer that you just kind of have to get your ducks in a row before the next contract is up because you could get surprised,” said Wright, a graduate of Washington State University and an inductee into the Hall of Achievement at the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication.
A friend of Wright’s introduced him to one of the top mortgage lenders in the country, and she told him she would make a place for him at her office if he got licensed.
Wright was still studying near the end of his time at KING 5. When his departure was finalized, he buckled down and got his license, joining the mortgage firm later that year.
His timing wasn’t ideal, as interest rates began a steady climb. He knew it was going to be a hard two or three years for seasoned mortgage veterans – and he had no experience.
A friend who had left KING 5 for WORK2P2, a nontraditional media founded by entrepreneur Dan Rogers, called Wright in fall 2022 and told him the company was testing out a personal development curriculum on “intentional living.” The friend asked if he’d like to sign up for the course for free. Sure, he said.
“By the end of the 10-week course, I was blown away at how I changed, how I showed up every day with intentionality, how I was getting things done that I’ve been putting off for a year,” Wright said. “It was just a radical awakening in terms of intentional living.”
He later met with Rogers, and the two clicked. In November, Rogers offered Wright a job hosting the company’s “Beats Working” podcast, a program focused on exploring ways to improve work for employers and employees.
Rogers hired Wright on Jan. 1.
“The older I’ve gotten, the more I know when it’s time to course correct,” Wright said. “You don’t agonize over it. You course correct.”
When Wright asked his future boss for his job description at WORK2P2, Rogers immediately replied that there was no job description. Wright pressed him for more details, and Rogers eventually relented – sort of.
“He said, ‘Look if you want a job description, I’ll give you two things – be Mark and be awesome. That’s it,’” Wright said. “The way he’s structured this company is he wants it to be an example for other business owners.”
It turns out the company doesn’t have job descriptions. WORK2P2 employees enjoy a four-day workweek, unlimited paid time off, and fully paid medical insurance. Another perk is two weeks of “oscillation time” at the end of June and two weeks at the end of December. Oscillation is time when employees don’t work at all and recharge their batteries.
“It’s mandatory and gives us another month off from work so we can be our best when we come back,” Wright said.
Rogers is the CEO and owner of Point to Point Transportation, an event shipping company. Companies hire Point to Point to ship their equipment and materials to trade shows.
When the pandemic shut down the world, Rogers decided to start teaching what he learned about life and business to others. Wright took over as host of “Beats Working” shortly after Rogers started it.
“It was a fairly new podcast,” Wright said. “We’ve got 90 episodes now. We drop one episode a week. Coming up in August we’ll celebrate our 100th episode of ‘Beats Working.’”
Some of the “Beats Working” guests have included former Starbucks President Howard Behar, molecular biologist/brain scientist John Medina, and Mukilteo-based Kaas Tailored President Jeff Kaas.
“We’ve got all kinds of guests all trying to show a better way of doing work,” Wright said.
At many businesses, work can be a broken relationship between the company and an employee, Wright said. But he and Rogers say everyone wins when companies design the right environment. That work environment needs to be designed. Wright noted that among some human resource professionals, there is a movement toward human-centric work similar to what is talked about in “Beats Working.”
“You honor human beings in the workplace. That is basically caring about them and their development,” he said. “So what that means is that work should develop you as a better human being in all areas of your life. That’s when work becomes what we think it should be.”
He describes Kaas, an early guest, as one of the most enlightened people in the world.
“When you ask him today, ‘Jeff, what do you do for a living?’ he says ‘I develop people, and we happen to make airplane seats and couches for Nordstrom.’”
Kaas Tailored is an industrial furniture manufacturer.
An innovation Kaas implemented was having employees place a cup – red, green, or yellow – at their workstations. Green means everything was going great, yellow indicates the employee is struggling with an issue, and red conveys a serious situation.
That means Kaas can look across the factory floor and have a snapshot of where people are and who needs help and who doesn’t.
An issue many businesses are struggling with is getting employees to return to the office; only about 60% of employees have returned to the office in downtown Seattle.
“There’s a fight and the experts that we talked to say instead of coming up with incentives, why don’t you sit down with your young employees and ask them what do you want from this experience? And then try to figure that out. … I just think that showing up with humanity is probably the single biggest thing that business leaders can do. That’s not rocket science. It’s just caring about the people you work with.”
Wright added many people, unfortunately, hate their jobs and view it as a simple transaction – a trading of time for money.
“I think that’s sad,” he said. “I think at the end of our lives we should look back at our work life and say ‘Oh my God. That was fun.’”
Business leaders are the target audience for “Beats Working” because they are the people who can create the workplace experience. But he and Rogers acknowledge that many of the ideas embraced in the podcast wouldn’t work in the corporate world – at least not yet.
“Corporations by law are required to return value to shareholders however that happens,” Wright said. “If it means laying off Mark Wright to get a cheaper anchor to make more money that year, that’s what you do. Dan will tell you that the corporate structure is broken because it really only cares about one thing, and that is money returned to shareholders.
“We believe you can make a lot of money and treat people right. But just the corporate structure, it kind of goes against that.”
About 10 years ago, Wright and the morning news team at KING 5 did a series of Get Fit segments with Dr. Emily Cooper of Seattle, a top metabolic expert. Cooper put Wright through the paces and did an extensive assessment of his health. Cooper came to him and said she thought Wright had metabolic syndrome, a cluster of conditions that increase the risk of developing heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.
His family doctor told him to eat better and exercise more, but all the numbers – blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol – were going in the wrong direction. After Wright became a patient of Cooper’s, he started losing weight and the numbers turned around.
“I’ve never been healthier,” Wright said.
Cooper later came to Wright with the idea of starting a podcast. Wright told her he’d love to host it, and the “Fat Science” podcast with Cooper and her patient and childhood friend Andrea Taylor was born.
The podcast debuted last November and already has cracked the top 3% of all podcasts, Wright said. “Fat Science” recently was in the top 10 of medical podcasts in the United States. In overseas markets, it has been in the top 5 in a number of countries.
“It’s just a great platform to talk about the truth of why we get fat,” he added. “Half the country right now is either diabetic or prediabetic, and it’s literally an epidemic.”
Wright hopes in the same way that business leaders can learn from “Beats Working,” doctors will tune into “Fat Science.”
“There’s still a lot of old thinking that’s not rooted in science. Too many doctors are blaming patients for their weight problems. The medical system is still way behind when it comes to understanding metabolic health.”
The future of WORK2P2 includes more podcasts and content; Rogers isn’t concerned about making money right now, Wright said.
“Dan says he doesn’t care about downloads. He wants us to do excellent work and to learn and grow. That’s his top priority. He’s continuing to refine the intentional training, the personal development course. … We’re working on a range of ideas that use the skill sets that we’re employing when it comes to producing podcasts and creating content. We’re coming up with some other ideas that at some point could be amazingly successful. But the focus is not on money. The focus is on creating great ideas.”
After his departure from KING 5, management at other stations in town approached Wright. He’s declined.
“I just told them I have the best job in the world,” he said, adding that he doesn’t have any hard feelings about his departure from TV news. “I have nothing but gratitude for the 35 years that I spent in broadcasting. It was the most interesting and amazing thing I could have done for a career, and I’m so grateful for that.”
But now instead of missing dinner with his wife, Wright is home every night.
“Just being home with my wife in the evenings is amazing,” he said. “It’s something I haven’t been able to do.” Wright took a vacation in February for the first time in decades. In television, February is a ratings month, meaning all hands on deck.
Podcasting has challenged Wright in ways he didn’t expect. When Rogers hired him, he said the goal was to become world-class storytellers. Wright said he thought he’s been doing that at a high level for a while.
“But I learned more in the last year and a half than probably in the last decade in terms of just long-form interviews. I think they are the hardest interviews to do because you have to weave a narrative that has a logical sequence.”
Sometimes interviews take a turn that he didn’t expect.
“I think managing a long-form interview is one of the hardest things – and it’s the most challenging and fun thing – because now instead of a 20-second sound bite, I get to talk to people for an hour. I absolutely love the experience of getting to know what makes people tick, what makes them successful.”
While podcasting as a medium is still in its infancy, Wright noted that it is growing. Some believe rapid-fire sound bites are the best way to keep listeners’ attention. Wright disagrees.
“You have to have a compelling story. So I think podcasting has proven two things. For human beings, stories are in our DNA. It has been for hundreds of thousands of years. If a story is good, we’ll listen to it. And podcasts are portable and easy to consume.
“I love that podcasts are growing in popularity because I think it really allows you to connect with people at a much deeper level than other forms of media.”
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