Start At The Top – Stories To Get You Off Your Ass


“Paying your dues” is for other people. Why spend years toiling away at low-end jobs when it’s possible to start right at the top?With passion and drive, you can go for what you want and achieve it. Mark Simon has done it… many times.

At 12, he had his own line of skateboards. At 14, he was superintendent of a construction company. While studying advertising in college, he drove past two billboards he designed and sold to local companies. With no writing experience, he accidentally sold his first book to a publisher. He went from being an assistant to running a department in three hours.
Mark sold his first training program to Keller Williams Realty, now the largest realty company in the world. It took him just 15 minutes to land his dream job with Steven Spielberg. It took him one call and one meeting to work on The Walking Dead. He landed Disney as his first animation client.

But with big swings, also comes big misses. He fucked up a deal to work with the director of the SpongeBob SquarePants movie. He screwed up an opportunity with animation gods Hanna-Barbera (creators of The Flintstones, Scooby Doo and many others). There are lessons to be learned from failures.

Dozens of stories and photos have been pulled from Mark’s amazing life to prove to you that you can get what you want without “paying your dues”.

Mark was inspired to write this book to guide and motivate his college-aged sons. The lessons he gained from each success and each failure are invaluable. He hopes these same stories will inspire you to start at the top.

Here’s the links to purchase the book:

Kindle Edition:

Print Edition:

Table of Contents

Forward
Preface
Section 1 – I Did It My Way

Section 2 – I am Mark – Hear Me Roar

Section 3 – Never Too Young

Section 4 – Tell Other People What to Do

Section 5 – Prove It, Don’t Just Say It

Section 6 – Fuck Ups

Section 7 – Screw It – I’ll Do It Myself

Section 8 – Constructing the Ultimate Attitude


(Mark Simon on the day he interviewed to work on The Walking Dead)

(Mark Simon Working For Spielberg on the NBC Series seaQuest DSV)

(Mark Simon Signing a Deal for the Properties B.C and Wizard of Id)