Have you ever fantasized about leaving your cubicle in the middle of the day, hopping on a plane and ending up on a tropical island far, far away from corporate-land? I think we all have, but Mark Harrison really did it when he moved to the tiny island Mauritius in the Indian Ocean and decided never to work from a cubicle again.
Mark is Chief Executive Officer of Abraham Harrison and shares the latter half of the company name and founding partner duties with Chris (obviously). Mark calls himself the “daddy” of the company, and I sat down with him (in Mauritius, on the beach, on the company dime – I wish) to find out why.
Ellie Brown: What is a typical work day like for you?
Mark Harrison: While I’m not too involved in the day-to-day client work we do at AH, I make sure everything in the back of the house of the company is running smoothly. I pay the bills, help sort out problems and get obstacles out of the way so that my team can do their best work – all the major company “daddy” duties except throwing a baseball around out back with Rodrigo (which I would gladly do if we weren’t separated by a continent and ocean).
EB: What is a typical non-work day like for you?
MH: As part-owner of a company, there really aren’t too many days when I consider myself not-working. I’m usually checking email even on my “days off.” But I try and make every day that I’m working or not working feel like a day that I own, rather than that owns me. In my free time I like going out with friends, watching sports, scuba- and free-diving and going to concerts in Berlin [Mark spends half the year living in Berlin and half the year living in Mauritius].
EB: What did you do before starting AH and how did those experiences prepare you for your current role as CEO?
MH: In college I studied international relations and I thought that eventually I’d be a diplomat. I worked for the U.N. for a while, did field research in Latin America and traveled extensively. I learned that I could function very successfully in an international environment and I knew I eventually wanted that in future positions.
I also found that through my various jobs that I had “geek” skills. I was always fixing computers and built up some pretty good hardware and software skills. I started being a “techy for hire” which has given me a strong basis for understanding what we do on the Internet. Eventually I started my first consulting company with a couple partners and learned how to run a company.
EB: What inspired you to start AH?
MH: The company really started as just Chris. When he started getting overwhelmed with opportunities is when he called me to help manage it. I signed on because we could design the company structure without the constraints of being in an office. We both just wanted to make a good living, do interesting work and live wherever we wanted. We never had the intention of growing as large as we did, as fast as we did – but the company’s growth both in terms of staff and clients is representative of how successful a virtual company model can be.
EB: What company accomplishments are you most proud of now?
MH: I am most proud of the company culture we’ve been able to create here. We have cultivated a very “human” environment that supports family, that supports travel and adventure and supports the notion that employees are people and not just workers. I’m also very proud of the work we’ve produced for our clients.
EB: What do you see for the future of AH? Will we ever have an office?
MH: Nope, no office. I expect the company to continue to grow, but I have no idea what it will look like when it’s 10 times larger than it is now. I hope the company will be a fractal of what we are now – the same structure, just bigger. I hope that it will still be normal for us to have calls with people in six different countries around the world at the same time.
EB: I’m now compiling a book of Chris Abraham social media analogies. You’ve known him the longest, what is your favorite one you’ve heard over the years?
MH: It’s funny because Chris and I both guilty of this since we came out of the techy relm where people didn’t really “get” anything you told them, unless you made it into an analogy they could understand. It just became our way of speaking and describing things.
A good analogy I always come back to is to defend our position on transparency. We have never been afraid to share any of our methods or strategies or anything. Just because you have instructions in a medical textbook to do an appendectomy, doesn’t make you qualified to do it. You should let a surgeon do it. That is why we more than happy to share our textbook with the world. If you want things done right, AH is your social media surgeon.
EB: I know that you’ve lived in Africa for years, so be honest. How many pairs of khaki “safari” pants to you own?
MH: [Laughs] Well, you caught me. I have about 4 pairs. And if you count khaki shorts, then I’ve got about a dozen.
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