Mark Russo is more than just the CEO of Treasure Investments. He is a visionary entrepreneur, a multibillionaire, an artist, and a designer. He is also a gifted visualizer known for his creative previsualization. Facing more failures than most encounters in a lifetime, he has built a reputation as an unstoppable force in the world of the arts. Mark is a spark that ignites inspiration in those around him because only a rare few can rise from the dust again and again and soar higher each time.
Like his business, where he creates masterpieces from nothing, Mark has built a life worth admiration, respect, and awe from nothing.
A Visit to an Art Show
Mark has always been fascinated by the art world. He is a gifted artist driven by vision. One glance at a bare piece of property, and he can visualize the finished project in a millisecond. This is an ability only a few possess. Mark’s artistic talent is in his genes, as his family has a long artistic lineage that includes painters, designers, and illustrators. “My great-grandfather, one of the Italian marble masons from Genoa, carved the lions in the New York Stock Exchange,” Mark shares. So, his involvement in the arts was a natural fit. Mark is not only artistic but also has an entrepreneurial mindset. This allows him to channel his creativity to make a monetary profit. There are not many successful artists who can claim that.
One of the biggest turning points of his career was in 1988. Mark received an invitation to an art show at the James Blanchard investment conference in New Orleans. He was invited as an artist and designer and was offered a 20% commission on gross sales. Mark recalls visiting the conference and selling $900,000 worth of sculptures in three days. He made $180,000 in commissions, which is equivalent to about $2 million today. He was just 22 years old at the time.
He credits that success in New Orleans to his passion, knowledge of his products, and enthusiasm for them. Mark points out that enthusiasm is contagious. When he explained to potential buyers why a piece was created and the artist’s idea behind it, they could feel the artist’s passion for the artwork and bought more than one piece. This visit also reinforced Mark’s passion for artwork, which stemmed from his love for creating and designing. “I realized I had found my niche in the arts because I was passionate about it,” he says. He also points out that there is nothing that has bigger margins in the world than artwork.
“If you’re vertically integrated by definition, especially if you can create it, design it, manufacture it, and get points of distribution to sell, margins are high,” Mark explains. “In most cases, there are 99% margins.” And he likes to work in the space where the profit margins are high and the upside is substantial.
Exposed at a fairly young age to such a space, he loves it and understands its marketability. “I understand what people react to, and I know how to implement and move at extraordinary speed,” Mark says. “That is a combination for becoming financially successful in my space.”
Series of Failures, But Never Quit
Mark has seen his companies collapse from the heights of success. “Building a company to great success, hiring interim management, and then watching it fail, that was a pretty hard pill to swallow,” he recalls.
Mark did not pursue higher education after graduating from high school with a diploma. Following his high school graduation, he leaped into entrepreneurship with both feet. As someone who has experience in building several businesses from scratch, he feels that no school could have taught him the invaluable lessons he learned from building businesses. Mark established companies at a young age: at 19, 20, and 22.
He has not only founded art-based companies but also a biotech company and other businesses. Primarily, however, Mark has built companies in the art world. “It’s a very difficult field to get into,” he says. At a very young age, he experienced great success as well as horrible failures. Mark shares that one time, he lost millions of dollars and had to lay off 170 employees. Such “brutal hits” taught him valuable lessons.
“I could have just quit and cried and gone away, but I didn’t,” Mark says. He tapped into the lessons he had learned to make a better, stronger, and healthier company in the future.
Building a Hyper-Efficient Company: Treasure Investments
Mark chose to retire from the arts space on a high note — he was successful and made lots of money — while he was still young. After retirement, he began to feel that he had left something on the table. He had a company that built monuments and giant statues for hotels, casinos, and bank buildings, while another business of his created pure silver statues. In addition to them, he ran a business that featured artwork, which they consigned to galleries around the world. He also had another business that donated artwork to charity, helping raise hundreds of millions for nonprofits.
“I thought, ‘what if I built a company that was hyper efficient, that had all of the legs to the table, and it was kind of well balanced,’” Mark says. He felt it would be amazing to have a company that donated artwork to charity under a great model, that built monuments with silver sculptures, that placed artwork in galleries, and that went to conferences, all of them combined into one super-efficient business model.
In the 1980s, Mark started collecting plaster molds of artwork, and he has amassed the largest plaster master mold collection in the world. “It’s 2700 original molds, and those are the negatives of the positives that allow you to create an image, whether it’s a mermaid or a golfer or an eagle and a flag,” Mark says. “Those are the tools and dies that allow us to create limited editions.” That collection has now grown into Treasure Investments.
For Mark, Treasure Investments represents the best of all the businesses in his lifetime combined into one business model. It incorporates all the great successes and learning from all the failures and mistakes — which are successes, in his mind — into one hyper-efficient company. In addition to serving fundraising auction events, Treasure Investments builds monuments for people, corporations, banks, and hotels across the world. The mediums are bronze, silver, gold, and cast cold resin, but the primary mediums are bronze limited-edition statuary and pure silver castings. Mark and his team have built the world’s greatest statues in pure silver. Michelangelo’s 17-foot-tall David is the largest pure silver sculpture ever cast.
Treasure Investments has six profit centers and an auction platform where they donate artwork to nonprofit charities across the U.S., and there are 121 gallery partners selling their pieces in the U.S. The profit centers of the company are unique because of the Renaissance collection. Mark points out that they bought the licenses from a foundry that got them from the Vatican. “This took us to a quantum level,” he informs. “We went from a company worth about $800 million to right now having a market cap of around $9 billion. We are literally debt-free and profitable.”
“I don’t know any company today that started its business eight years ago, built it from scratch, and now has a market cap of $9 billion,” he says.
Treasure Investments will soon be opening its sixth profit center, which is the first-ever art leasing division for statuary that exists in the world today. For Mark, having a business that is profitable, that is a delight for his shareholders, and doing what no one believed could be done, creating the greatest artistry in the history of mankind in precious metals and bringing back Michelangelo, are all among the greatest achievements of his career.
“To me, if you asked me what my greatest success is, it is creating, and casting the largest pure silver and pure gold masterpieces from the Renaissance, which means rebirth,” Mark says. “This is the revival of the Renaissance, casting masterworks from the original molds made directly from the marble pieces in the museums by Michelangelo, whom I believe to be one of the greatest artists in the history of mankind.”
Responsibilities of an Inspirational CEO
In his role as CEO, Mark focuses on quality control, doing the unthinkable in a positive way, building the impossible with optimism, staying energized, and uplifting those around him. “When people talk to me, they walk away with a smile on their face,” Mark says.
At work, he is also the cheerleader, the quarterback, and the running back. He leads the company in the right direction and gives their shareholders the highest and best value for their share price and their investment. Mark says that there are about 280 private shareholders who have given them tremendous support to get where they are today. Maintaining relations with both shareholders and employees is also a part of his responsibility. In addition, he drives nonstop creativity and ensures they stay on track. As CEO, it is also his job to guide his staff, take them to higher and better levels, not just financially, but in their lives as well.
“We do more in a day than most companies do in six months, Mark says. “We operate at a high level.” He is an ultra-high-performance, results-driven leader who derives his motivation from building new things. “We create something from nothing,” he says. When they create a new image, whether it is a set of battling stallions or a life-size stagecoach for a museum, it didn’t exist before they dreamed it up.
“Creating something from nothing to physical reality is extraordinary,” he says. “It’s not like some blockchain zero and virtual space of nothingness. It’s tactile, physical, and will exist for an eternity.”
Mark is an “alpha male.” But he possesses leadership qualities that inspire others to innovate, stay positive, heal, and solve problems. “I’m a CEO and leader of inspiration,” he says. He likes to share his failures, mistakes, and successes with others so that they can learn from what he has been through and find their own path to success.
The Big Plan: Monetization of Renaissance Collection
Mark is set to monetize the Renaissance Collection. He plans to continue expanding the collection of pure silver and precious metal castings, in addition to scaling the auction model that raises funds for resource-strapped charities.
However, his focus currently is on the exit strategy. Mark intends to monetize the Renaissance Collection through high-value physical sales in silver and gold, as well as digital cryptocurrency, and fractionalize those assets with a token and blockchain event.
“This is the first time precious metals have met blue chip artwork,” Mark points out. “No one has ever done this before, and the returns are phenomenal.” He also says that his job now is to monetize the assets for the highest and best value for their shareholder base. “For the first time in history, we are casting the greatest artwork, from the most important museums, using the only and original plaster moulds by the most talented geniuses that ever existed, and are creating posthumous originals in pure silver and solid gold. I believe we can take this opportunity to a level of several hundred billion dollars and very quickly.”
Message for Aspiring Leaders
“Associate yourself with people who are successful in the field you want to make a mark in,” Mark advises aspiring leaders. For example, if someone wants to build a company, they need to talk to someone who has built a successful company. To stress that point, he gives the example of eagles soaring with eagles and not crows.
Mark says that he takes advice from people more successful than him, and he asks them a million questions, such as what they would do or how they would do it differently. He also advises aspiring leaders to determine where they want to go or identify their goals and then map out how to get there. Mark had a lofty goal list, which included paying millions of dollars to the IRS, buying his dream property, buying a new helicopter, staying fit, and rebuilding his marriage.
“I put the list everywhere, on my steering wheel, in my bathroom, because you don’t know the power of your subconscious mind,” he says. “Not only did I achieve that list, but I also exceeded it by three times.”
Achieved Beyond Dreams!
When he looks back, Mark feels that he has achieved beyond what he had dreamed of. His beginnings were humble. He grew up in a dysfunctional family with very few means, not knowing what the next day would bring. Mark, however, always knew he wanted more out of life.
When he started climbing the success ladder, he experienced a series of setbacks. He made money multiple times and lost it multiple times. “I was a multi-millionaire and then I lost everything, and had to start over again,” Mark says.
“But at the end of the day, it’s not just about the money,” he adds. “It’s about having a well-balanced wheel.” He doesn’t measure success by wealth, but by health, fitness, love, and happiness.
“It’s about a well-rounded balance, life, health, fitness, love, relationships, spirituality, whatever it is, you’ve got to have balance, or you’re going to hit a bumpy road,” Mark says.
