Marco A. Ríos

THE STORY

Cracking the Code: Marco Rios on Trust, Culture, and the Rules Nobody Writes Down

"What's the real need? What's the real desire? What's the pain that you are helping the client to solve with your product or service?"

Those are the questions Marco Rios asks every business he works with, and he's bringing them to TEDxUnityPark 2026.

Marco spends his days helping people grow. As the Bilingual Business Consultant at the South Carolina SBDC and the founder of Marco Rios Growth, he has advised more than 225 businesses in more than 15 years of work across the U.S., Mexico, and Latin America, and he has spoken for BMW USA, Milliken, and Professional Photographers of America. At this year's TEDxUnityPark, his talk "You Can't Scale What You Don't Understand" asks leaders to stop translating their pitch and start learning how a market actually makes up its mind. It's about as practical as a big idea gets.

"Most leaders enter new markets by exporting the same message, changing the language, and expecting the same results."

Marco is originally from Puebla, Mexico. He built his career inside private companies, "mainly on the sales, developing teams, developing the marketing teams," he says, and earned one of his master's degrees at Oklahoma State before landing in South Carolina five years ago.

That move taught him something no degree covered. "When I came here to the States, you don't know the system," he said during TEDxUnityPark Media Day. He'd lived in New York and Orlando, where "you can live without car over there." Here, you can't.

"We didn't have the credit score and all that, so we bought a really expensive car. I said, hey, if I am prepared, and they took advantage of me, what about the other people?"

That's his whole talk in one story. A prepared guy walked into a system with rules nobody had explained to him, and he paid for it. Marco decided to do something about it.

"So that's why I started to say, I want to help people, not just Hispanic, everybody to grow."

He started doing more work with the Hispanic community, and today 80% of his clients are Hispanic. That work put him on stage at a BMW conference. "That's when I start to see, hey, I really like this because I can share with more people my message," he says.

He kept running into the same problem in different clothes. Owners tell him, "I need more marketing, and I need to sell more." What's usually missing is the connection.

At Media Day, he switched languages halfway through an answer to prove it.

"Puedo empezar a hablar español, y no me vas a entender. I can start to speak Spanish, and you won't understand me. But it's not just the language. You have to talk also the culture, what they really want."

That's Marco: warm, a little mischievous, and allergic to theory nobody can use on Monday. He calls the thing underneath a market's choices its "hidden decision code," the values, fears, and unwritten rules that decide who people trust. Ask any transplant about the first time someone told them "bless your heart." Same words, completely different meaning.

He has taken that message to audiences in Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina. He also learned it the hard way. His own bio mentions rebuilding after business mistakes and six-figure debt. "I have lived it, failed through it, rebuilt from it," as he puts it, "and now help leaders avoid the expensive mistake of assuming a new market thinks like their old one."

TEDxUnityPark's 2026 theme is Multiply, and Marco beat us to it in his application:

"Leaders don't multiply growth by translating their message into new markets; they multiply it by understanding how those markets decide who to trust, follow, and buy from."

We've been saying all year that you multiply your reach through your relationships. Marco's version is the step most of us skip. Before anyone shares your message, they have to decide to believe you.

A year ago, Marco left Lexington and had to pick between Charleston and Greenville. "I really choose Greenville because of how it's growing," he says.

"I say that always Greenville is the perfect size because it's not a big city. So you don't have all the crazy traffic and all that, but you have all the restaurants, shows, and all that."

His one request: "I hope it stays, it keeps growing, but not too fast."

What many don't know about Marco is that this is the first TEDx talk he has ever applied for. "It's funny because it's the first time that I apply for any TEDx talk," he said at Media Day. He's also still loyal to his old school. Mid-sentence about Oklahoma State, he added, "go Pokes."

This one is for every owner with a great product who can't figure out why the right people aren't buying. Marco's talk is more than a marketing lesson. It's a nudge to listen before you sell.

He closed his interview in both languages, and told anyone who only speaks Spanish to come anyway, "because you will socialize, you will know, and you will increase your network."

"Como siempre digo, tu legado inicia donde terminan tus excusas."

"As I always say, your legacy starts where your excuses end."