Mark Shearer is an intuitive and dynamic thinker with a proven history of innovation and leadership, alongside extensive knowledge of how to bring start-up projects quickly to market.
Shearer has 24 years of senior management experience, primarily in sports and technology markets, creating and delivering products and services, as well as building company revenue streams and leading operations.
Shearer is the founder and managing director of Book Your Block LLC. Book Your Block provides customized travel technology and a fully managed event hotel solution to event rights holders and sports organizations. The company electronically sources from 600,000+ properties worldwide, provides a customized branded online booking engine and offers real-time digital reporting to all parties.
A former England Schoolboy international player, Shearer arrived in the United States on a soccer scholarship at Fairleigh Dickinson University, where he obtained a degree in computer science. After graduating from college, Shearer worked as a Junior Computer Analyst with Kulite Semi-Conductor Products and simultaneously played professional soccer, as one of the two league allowed foreign players, with the New Jersey Eagles of the American Professional Soccer League, and represented the all-star league team against the Italian B National Team in Foggia, Italy.
Shearer's success on the field saw him return to England, where he spent eight months as a non-contract player at Newcastle United FC. Lacking consistency in his performances and unwilling to be loaned to the lower leagues, Shearer returned to the United States to become the assistant coach at alma mater before taking the reigns at the North Jersey Imperials professional soccer team of the USISL, where at the age of twenty-seven he surprised many by leading the team to success. Shearer's contract was bought by the New York Fever professional team, where he recruited and coached players with FIFA World Cup, US National Team, and collegiate experience and in just his first season as head coach captured two major trophies for the club. Shearer's passion for learning and self-development saw him become the first coach in the United States to attain the respected US Soccer "A", UEFA "A" and NSCAA Master Coach licenses.
However, unlike the majority of senior-level coaches, Shearer elected to transition at an early age from the pitch to the business world to capitalize on the rapid growth of soccer in the youth sports market. Shearer created two vertically-integrated club development models for Tri-State Soccer and then The Sports Factory/TSF Academy, which was supported by a grassroots training business; these incorporated over 5,000 players annually, and both were successful commercially, as well as in terms of club and player development.
Shearer's passion for providing solutions combined with his soccer and technology knowledge saw him create T4 Soccer LLC, a performance assessment testing and data-driven analytics platform, alongside College Soccer Connector, an online resource to help clubs and their member families better understand and more efficiently navigate the college recruitment process. Shearer is an innovator in soccer technology initiatives, has recruited World Cup-winning coaches, US National Team players and respected senior business executives to his projects, and has completed strategic partnerships with national organizations including the United Soccer Coaches, United Soccer Leagues, Major League Soccer teams, and Women's Professional Soccer teams. This extensive personal network was tapped into by National Adult Leagues, where Shearer strategically oversaw the growth of the nation's fastest-growing off-season collegiate soccer league, and more recently, with Golden Goal Sports Park, where he formulated and led a plan to turn around an underachieving residential sports complex. By year three of his tenure with Golden Goal, the facility was attracting over 50,000 visitors per year, achieved a 98% overall customer satisfaction rating, and attained a 75% annual customer return rate. In his final consulting year, Golden Goal was nominated for the Washington County Business of the Year Award and is now recognized by sports organizations domestically and internationally as the premier residential sports facility in the northeast.
Shearer was an initial investor - and served as the initial business consultant - for Nina Torres Fine Art, a prestigious art gallery in Miami, FL, and the Miami River Art Fair, downtown Miami's only international art exhibition, which expanded to exhibitions in Dubai, London, Monaco, New York, Singapore and Venice, and whose curator received a special invitation to the Vatican to discuss art with pope Francis.
Shearer's future focus is to collaborate and build innovative technology projects with passionate individuals and teams.