Fresh out of college, ready to conquer the world, I entered corporate America as an operations manager for an ice cream company.  (I guess this is where my love for food began, to be even more specific, this is where my love for sweets began.)

After a few years, I realized that I could not be a part of the corporate political scene so I started my first business: an advertising agency.  Although I had zero experience, I was confident that I could do as good a creative job – if not better – than what I was seeing local agencies produce.  My concentration was on acquiring retail accounts, the business-to-consumer accounts, as opposed to commercial or industrial (business-to-business) accounts.

My reason for chasing retail accounts was simple: you would know within 24 hours of the start of an advertising campaign if it was a success or not.  Cash registers do not lie.  My ad agency grew as well as my client roster.  restaurant chains, clothing stores, furniture stores were some of my clients.

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I had to take over our family’s tour and travel business which was operated from the basement of our home.  The objective was to only operate the business for as long as it would take to pay off the staggering debt and then return to the “sane” world of advertising.

Little did I know how bad things were.  I thought it would be a quick fix for a few months tops.  Well, it took just over a year.  During this time period, I stopped all unprofitable air tours and solely concentrated on motorcoach (bus) tours.  Why make a measly 10% margin of profit when you could run your own tours and make 30% or more.  Same effort but the income was much, much better.

Bottom line, things started to get exciting with our little basement bus tour business.  More advertising and building a strong travel agency network lead to more of our tours booked.  More and more tours booked meant hiring more staff.   Finally, it was time to open our first retail office location.  New location: Cranston, RI.  New company name: Hartley Tours.

Hartley Tours grew into a very large regional tour operation with 22 offices, 7 of which were franchised.  We even outgrew the ability of area bus companies to service us so we started our own: Andrews Transportation.  Andrews likewise grew from zero busses to 21 busses over a two year period.

Over the years our staff went from one (me) to over 130.  I operated Hartley and Andrews for a number of years.  And the fact that I ran both companies for a number of years amazes me insofar as still being alive.  A 90 hour week felt like I was slacking off.  And when I was not physically present at our main office, I was in constant touch with both our tour and bus operations people.  (Even emergency “during the night” calls were put through to me: “Andy, I have Bob on the phone, he’s in Worcester with his bus and he just ran out of fuel…”  “Andy, I have a Mr. Smith on the phone.  He said he was using the bus’ restroom and the bus made a sudden jolt and his false teeth came flying out of his mouth into the bus’ waste holding tank…”

Well, you get the picture of how my nights were spent.

When the opportunity came to sell my buses, trust me, it was a pleasure getting rid of them and all the headaches they brought to me (and my family).

As soon as I was able to sell Hartley Tours, the tour operations, I did.

What to do?  What to do?

I decided I wanted to own and operate a business where come Friday afternoons I would have only one person to pay (me) instead of the 130+ at Hartley/Andrews.  I also decided to keep overhead low and no heavy duty capital investments (compare this to a single bus costing $250,000).  So, I hit upon the idea of doing business-to-business, shared mail advertising.  MaxiPaks Communications was born.

MaxiPaks targeted 4 mailing markets: restaurants, contractors, physicians and lawyers.

Vendors who wanted to reach these targeted markets would participate in the mailings.  (This was kind of like SuperCoups but it was only sent to businesses no consumers.)

Over the years, MaxiPaks had tremendous growth all over New England and select New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Texas, Arizona and California markets.  I was kind of like the phantom father as I would usually leave on a Sunday night and drive like a maniac to make sales calls from Maine to Pennsylvania over the next 4 or 5 days before returning home.

In the summer of 2007 I decided that given the slight downturn in business (start of this area’s recession) and the way I had to now conduct business (in lieu of the person-to-person sales trying to do it over the phone and internet) it was time to pull the plug on MaxiPaks’ direct mail programs until the economy rebounded.  All advertising contracts were honored right through May, 2008.

Since then I have scoured the internet for a business I could do from home without any fixed expenses.  A business which had vast income potential if you work at it (which I was more than willing to do).  A business which I could run “on the side” should I decide to resume my business-to-business direct mail company.  Then I found the Numis Network. Let’s say the rest is history.

P.S. I should mention that my previous 16 years experience in network marketing was mostly with a company called Excel Communications.  I did this “on the side” while I was working my MaxiPaks business.  I reached the level of Executive Director in Excel very quickly by putting into practice my business, marketing – and most importantly – people skills.