My greatest desire is to be remembered as someone who helped people achieve, not only their potential, but their dreams. As a company executive and international business consultant, I have helped entrepreneurs achieve their vision, realize those dreams and earn millions of dollars from the businesses they started, enabled employees to find the right career in which they could excel, and ensured customers could achieve their goals through the right mix of goods and services.

I always knew I wanted to lead people to great things. In high school, I considered following the family tradition of joining the military – until I found out that I could not enlist at the rank of “General”. Instead, I became a competitive athlete and ultimately a nationally-ranked competitive athlete in Judo. This experience taught me the importance of good coaching, a game plan, teamwork, and individual effort. I thought I’d become a physical education teacher and coach, but I quickly discovered that the lessons I learned in sports had application in the business world.

Like many people, my early work experience consisted of several customer-facing jobs. I’ve been a lifeguard, salesman, and bartender. Because of my martial arts training, I could always find work as a doorman for clubs and bars. This experience helped me learn the basics of creating great customer experiences – maintaining a safe environment for customers. However, after an intoxicated customer I was escorting out tried to shoot me, I sought less dangerous work in the health club industry. I started as a personal trainer, where I helped customers achieve their personal fitness goals. This led to health club management where I designed new processes for sales, operations, and customer experiences for over 20 health clubs.

My work at this time caught the attention of the well-known authors and motivational speakers Tony Alessandra and Rick Barrera. I was a student of their ideas and they were intrigued with how I put them to work developing customer relationships. They decided to feature me in their book Non-Manipulative Selling (Prentice-Hall). Working with Tony and Rick, I learned not to manipulate customers, but to understand their needs and goals – which I believe is the secret to developing long-term customer relationships.

My expertise in sales became my ticket to greater opportunities. Don Keough of American City Business Journals (ACBJ) hired me to help start up business-oriented newspapers in new locations. I became an Executive Vice President, launching and managing papers from Jacksonville, FL to San Francisco, CA . My efforts helped the company become, in 1987, number 11 on the INC. 500 small publicly traded companies list. Today, ACBJ continues to thrive with papers in 41 cities. I had now found my calling – leading and growing companies. I left ACBJ to join a managementconsulting firm. One of my first leadership engagements w as with a major Utah-based ski resort. Yes, the skiing was great (which is the question everyone asks me). However, what I learned most was how to create solutions for  maximizing the customer experience, both on the slopes and in our restaurants and lodgings.

Through other consulting and executive leadership positions, such as with Chums, an eyewear accessories company (INC. 157), I carved out a niche as one who could help fast-growing entrepreneurial companies transition into managed companies. Based upon these experiences, I wrote my awardwinning book, ENTRPRENEURAL TRANSITIONS (Griffin). This led to featured speaker engagements for INC. magazine and a contributing editor gig for Success magazine. Furthermore, numerous publications including Nations Business, Investors Business Daily, INC., Success, Entrepreneur, Atlanta Business Journal, Franchise Update, and several daily newspapers wrote about my ideas and methods. I appeared on several television shows and in general became well known and made my parents proud.

It was through these ideas that I connected with Bob Cowan, founder of American Teleconferencing Services (ATS). At the time, ATS was a twice-listed INC. 500 company with annual sales of about $6 million. The company provided teleconferencing services to companies and led the industry in innovative services for investor relations, marketing, and product training. I became president of ATS and in less than three years grew the company to $64 million in annual sales. We invested heavily in creating do-it-yourself services using IVR and web-based technologies that enabled our customers to reserve their own teleconferences. We built the MarketTouch consulting services to teach our customers how to deliver world-class teleconferences to their customers. Ultimately, Boland Jones, founder of Premiere GlobalServices (NYSE: PGI), saw that ATS complimented the telecommunications business he built. PGI acquired ATS and it became Premiere Conferencing. The conferencing business now contributes over $200 million in annual revenues to PGI.

After the acquisition of ATS, I continued working with PGI as president of several operating divisions. During this time the company went through a restructuring in which I had to sell several of the divisions. When the last division was sold, I was effectively out of a job. So, I bought a boat and lived the dream everyone dreams – taking a well-earned two-year sabbatical cruising around Mexico.

Now I’m ready for the next challenge. I’m consulting with a family-run food center in Florida to help them become the next Stew Leonard’s. In addition to helping them open their second location, I’ve been guiding them in how to enhance their customer experience. We’ve implemented new management structures, merchandising methods, customer service training, mystery shopping, and an innovative management bonus program. The company is on its way to become a $100 million company. I also serve as a board member and consultant to another INC. 500 company, Distant Replays, located in Atlanta GA.

My life’s story wouldn’t be complete without a bit of glue that connects the stories together. I earned a B.S. from SUNY Brockport and an MBA from the University of Phoenix. My home bases are South Florida and San Diego. Looking back on my career, I w as blessed to work with some incredible visionaries, people who literally changed the way industries operated. The opportunities were not only educational but tremendously exciting. They form the foundation of my new book, CREATING DO-IT-YOURSELF CUSTOMERS (Thomson Texere)