Marketing Hacks 57 Do-It-Yourself Tactics To Find Qualified Customers And Make More Sales! (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780692390818)

I was born in New Jersey, and raised by a single mother, grandmother, and grandfather in East Orange, New Jersey. My grandfather owned Orange Mattress Company with his brother, Frank, a mattress manufacturer since 1902, a family business. My mother would bring me to "The Factory," where I learned sales, marketing, and business while watching the salespeople sell, and my mother and Uncle Frank create the ads that were placed in newspapers and magazines. It was the best education someone in my field could get. My mother married my father, Phil, who was in the bar business. And when I was old enough, I bounced around from the bar business to the mattress business. In the bar business you really learn about human behavior, which helps in marketing. You learn empathy and how to respond to every situation, which also helps in sales. I have always been extroverted and loved music, so I gravitated toward the nightclub business and became a DJ, which I enjoyed for many years. Later I had some minor success as a union actor, which was when I met my wife, Francine, also an actor. After acting, I started in professional sales and sales management, a profession where I was successful. I managed the sales and marketing of a merchant services company and increased their company sales to a point where they were offered a buyout from their competitor that they could not refuse. After a few years in sales, this new crazy thing called the Internet was all over the news. It seemed like the Wild West to me (and it was), so I looked for a way to make some money with this Internet thing. I started developing websites in 1995, and after a year or two, I was contracted to develop the websites for the company who manufactured electronic toys such as Barbie(R), Playskool(R), Fisher-Price(R), Hot Wheels(R) and home electronics such as Timex(R), Zenith(R), and Soundesign(R) to name a few. My team was selling websites and related services, when clients started asking for other stuff: Internet marketing, search engine optimization, ads, brochures, direct mail, and so forth. So we then expanded to become a non-commission marketing and advertising agency. In 1998 I became an instructor at a local college, teaching classes in Advertising and Marketing, How to Start a Business, Webmaster Certificate, Search Engine Optimization, HTML, Website Design and Marketing, and Web Server Administration, to name a few.