Hello. We’re Maggie Mark and Kai Cunliffe, the people behind Riviera State of Mind™.

We work at the intersection of business strategy, positioning, authority, visibility, research, publishing and practical advisory.

Our consulting work is built around a simple idea: good businesses are often much better than the way they are understood from the outside.

They may have the expertise, the experience, the offer and the ability to deliver, but their positioning is unclear, their message is diluted, their digital presence does not reflect the quality of their work, or they simply are not visible to the right people.

That is where we come in.

We work with founders, experts, consultants, property professionals, hospitality businesses and other independent operators to clarify what they do, strengthen how they are positioned, build authority around their expertise and create a more coherent presence across their website, content and wider business.

Our work can include business and offer strategy, positioning, authority building, visibility, content, digital presence, research, websites, messaging and strategic problem-solving.

Maggie brings a background spanning finance, marketing, journalism, writing, business strategy, coaching and real estate, together with more than 25 years of expatriate experience across the United States and Europe.

Kai brings a background in technology, operational intelligence, machine learning, digital systems, cyber security, research and analytical problem-solving.

We come at problems from different directions, which is rather the point.

Maggie tends to ask: What does this mean to the person on the other side? Why should they care? What makes this business memorable, credible and worth choosing?

Kai tends to ask: Does it actually work? What is the evidence? Where are the weak assumptions, inefficiencies or technical problems?



Somewhere between those two questions is usually a much better business.

Publishing is not an afterthought at Riviera State of Mind™. It is one of the central parts of what we are building.

Our books and guides turn research, lived experience and analysis into practical resources people can actually use.

The growing Riviera State of Mind™ Guides collection covers Monaco, Nice, Sanremo, Genova, the French and Italian Rivieras, the South of France and other destinations across the Mediterranean region.

We look beyond the holiday version of a place.

Beautiful coastlines, grand hotels, terraces, architecture and Mediterranean life matter. So do property prices, rental markets, residency rules, healthcare, taxes, schools, banking, transport, bureaucracy and whether the place still works for you on an ordinary Tuesday in February.

Our aim is to produce guides that are useful before somebody makes an expensive decision.

That same philosophy runs through our consulting work: better information, clearer thinking and fewer assumptions before action.

Riviera Advisory

Because of where we live and work, we also operate selectively across property, relocation, hospitality and regional opportunities in Monaco, the French Riviera and the Italian Riviera.

This can include private property searches, relocation guidance, introductions, hospitality opportunities, selected off-market situations and strategic support for businesses operating in these sectors.

We do not try to be everything to everyone.

Where specialist legal, tax, immigration, financial or technical advice is required, we believe in involving the appropriate qualified professional rather than pretending one adviser should know everything.

Our Mission

Our mission is to help people and businesses become clearer about what they are doing, stronger in how they present it, more authoritative in their market and better equipped to make important decisions.

That may mean repositioning a business.

It may mean building a website that finally explains why somebody should hire you.

It may mean turning years of expertise into content, intellectual property or a stronger public presence.

It may mean researching a market or challenging an assumption before money is committed.

Or it may mean helping somebody understand whether Monaco, Nice, Sanremo or Genova really is where they want to build the next chapter of their life.

Different problems.

Same principle:

Understand first. Position properly. Then move.

We believe in curiosity, evidence, preparation, discretion, independence of thought and doing things properly.

We are both deeply interested in how things work — businesses, people, markets, technology, places and decisions.

We also believe expertise should survive scrutiny.

Impressive language cannot compensate for weak thinking. Visibility without substance eventually becomes noise. Strategy without execution is decoration. Technology without understanding the human problem rarely solves very much.

At the same time, excellent work that nobody understands or sees has a problem of its own.

That is why our work sits between substance and communication.

Maggie’s professional background includes finance, marketing, journalism, writing, strategy, business coaching and real estate. She holds postgraduate qualifications in finance and business, trained through the London School of Journalism, studied strategy through Harvard Business School Online and qualified as a Master Business Coach.

Her professional life has crossed countries, industries and cultures, from finance and education to entrepreneurship, real estate, publishing and advisory work.

Kai’s background spans technology, machine learning, operational intelligence, digital systems, cyber security and complex problem-solving, alongside extensive operational and business experience.

His work brings a particularly useful discipline to research: question the premise, examine the system, look for what does not fit and avoid accepting conventional wisdom simply because it has been repeated often enough.

Between us, there is a fairly substantial amount of curiosity. That helps.

We value honesty, intellectual independence, useful work, strong relationships and delivering more substance than the marketing promises.

♥ We are both relentlessly curious. A conversation can begin with property prices in Monaco and somehow end with machine learning, Roman history, behavioural psychology or why a particular town works better in November than August.

♥ Books matter enormously to us. We write them, research them, argue over details in them and keep producing more of them.

♥ We both like people who know things. Craftspeople, specialists, operators, chefs, engineers, writers, analysts - people who have spent enough time doing something to understand the bits that never appear in a textbook.

♥ Maggie has spent more than 25 years living outside her country of birth. That has produced a considerable collection of homes, languages, cultural misunderstandings and opinions about bureaucracy.

♥ Kai has an unusually broad technical and operational background. He has an inconvenient habit of asking the question that exposes the flaw in an otherwise perfectly attractive idea.

♥ We both love the Mediterranean, although neither of us believes sunshine automatically makes somewhere a sensible place to live.

♥ We like building things. Businesses, books, systems, ideas, websites, offers and occasionally plans that begin with, “What if we…?”

♥ Neither of us is particularly interested in corporate theatre. We prefer substance, humour, competence and conversations where people can say what they actually mean.

♥ Riviera State of Mind™ is still growing. More books, more research, more consulting work and probably a few things we have not thought of yet.

If you would like to work with us - whether on business strategy, positioning, authority, visibility, content, digital presence, publishing, relocation or a Riviera-related project - you are welcome to get in touch through the Contact page.

Maggie Mark & Kai Cunliffe

Riviera State of Mind™