As a young man, working for Texas Instruments, I was looking for a way to make some extra money. It seemed I was always short of cash, as we all are when just starting out. One day at lunch, I was lamenting my predicament with some friends, when someone suggested I do what he did: write technical articles for publication in the trade magazines. He showed me a couple of articles he had written and said that he had become something of an expert because of his writings. I was very impressed though I couldn’t see myself as a writer.

Coincidentally, my father was in Public Relations and we had spent many hours discussing what he did for his clients and the effect his PR campaigns had on their businesses. I learned a lot from him. But although the idea stayed with me, I never pursued writing as a career, preferring to stay with computers.

Later, I went to work with a small company troubleshooting computer problems for the airline industry. I loved it! I got to travel all over the world, see great sights and meet interesting people. The company also had a great training policy, especially for anyone involved with customers. We were constantly in the Xerox Management Training and Customer Relations classes. These gave me a solid background in dealing with difficult customers and solving critical problems while under pressure. Later, Honeywell Information Systems bought up the company and the job took an interesting turn.

I was very good at what I did, and as a result was always asked to support Sales and Marketing at trade shows and conventions or when we were trying to close a large sale. By then, I had developed a reputation as someone who could fix any problem, whether it be with the computer or with the customer. So again I found myself traveling the world and having fun.

But Then …

But as with all things, the only constant is change. Honeywell failed to keep up with the competition and I soon found myself Technical Director for a small company that was in the newly emerging field of Smart Cards. These are credit cards with a computer chip embedded in them. The company focus was on telecommunications, that is, a smart telephone.

A day or two after I started the new job, I saw a small box with a card slot in the top sitting on a table. I asked what it was for and they said it was to connect the smart card to a computer. I then asked what they were going to do with it. They didn’t know, it was just sort of a toy, maybe something for the ‘techies’. But I could see other potential uses for this ‘toy’. More on this in a bit.

Like most small companies, this one didn’t understand the difference between Marketing and Sales. They had no idea how to develop the niche they wanted nor had they ever investigated the size and depth of the market for smart telephones (There wasn’t one). They had simply set up a budget of $100,000 for advertising, thinking that is how you developed a market. After one year, they had not received even a single lead from their year-long advertising effort. Not one.

During the same time however, I had been promoting and using the idea, borrowed from my dad, of writing articles, news and press releases to promote our business in place of advertising. We even got the local TV stations to do stories about us. This worked beyond even my expectations. Interest was high in this new technology and we captured a lot of attention. Better still, it gave us credibility. Soon, we were invited to sit on the ANSI and ISO standards committees for smart cards and were able to both learn from our competition and influence the direction of the market.

At a standards meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, one of our competitors remarked that he wished he had our PR team! What a great feeling. He had no idea that all the noise we were making around the world was just my boss and I. Our whole company at that time was only 5 people! But our articles had been picked up by news hungry publications all around the world, so in the public’s eye we must have been a large company. By now, I was responsible for all OEM marketing for the firm, with a 3% commission on sales.

Remember that ‘toy’ I mentioned earlier? I wrote a library of software tools for it along with a small manual and ‘How To’ instructions. I then packaged it as the ‘World’s First Smart Card Development Kit’ and did a series of press releases about it. We sold hundreds of them! We actually ran out of supply. But that was not the end of it.

With each sale, I would contact the company and offer our help with their development and even marketing. From this, we established many ‘Strategic Relationships’, and more news and press releases to go along with them. Ideas flowed like water. I couldn’t believe the things people wanted to do with this thing. There were applications in shipping, gambling, replacements for paper manuals, and many others.

In only 18 months, we developed more than $50 million in potential new business! And my commission was 3% of sales! About then, my boss woke up. He came running into my office and screamed “We can’t do this!” I asked “Do what?” and he answered “You can’t get a commission on these sales. You will make more money than I will!” I reminded him that he had a percentage of the company and in the long run would make much more that I would, but he refused to listen. He could only see how much money I would be making. I was willing to take a smaller commission, but he would have none of it. So we soon parted ways.

As far as I know, the company didn’t last long after that. But I went on to another great job.

Things Take a Turn for the Worse…

Because of both my technical and management skills, I was hired to open an office in Singapore. I was to manage the Asia market for a unit of General Signal, now SPX. As Managing Director, I had full P/L responsibility for all company operations. This was another great job with a lot of challenges and rewards. I was able to develop relationships with the Singapore Economic Development Board, China’s Department of Telecommunications and others. Unfortunately, it came to an abrupt end when my wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer. It was a terrible shock since she was so young, so I quit the job so I could take care of her.

After her passing, I stayed on in Singapore working for a local company until my employment pass ran out, altogether over 6 years. During my time there, I was invited to be a speaker at Computer Associates’ Technicon 95 trade show in New Orleans.

In 1996, I returned to the US and became a consultant. It was at this point that I became fascinated with the world of Internet Marketing. For the first time, we are able to see directly into the minds and hearts of our potential clients. In the past, except for direct inquiries, we had no way to measure how well our marketing efforts performed. Now, we can not only see what they were doing, we can influence that by changing our marketing strategy and getting the results almost instantly. Beautiful! I have been hooked ever since.