An Unexpected Journey to Greatness

I must admit that I did not choose marketing. If anything, marketing chose me. I was just doing things I really wanted to do.

As a teenager, I loved music more than anything else. In my junior year of high school, I was fat on credits and had most of my required courses completed. Due to overcrowding, my high school went to a split session. Students with employment were permitted to attend 4 classes daily, and then go to work. With the promise of a 4 hour school day as incentive, I landed a cashier position in a privately owned consumer electronics store at the mall. I never expected this to be the beginning of a journey to greatness.

Wow! All of the latest entertainment technology was at my fingertips. I was 16 years old. The cutting edge technology was quadraphonic. It promised to replace stereo (though it never did) and infected me with the high tech bug. After graduation, I made a series of career moves that placed me in commercial electronic component distribution, still well ahead of my 21st birthday. Semiconductors were new, Pong was high tech video gaming, memory chips were theoretical, and I was in sales heaven. Still shy of the legal drinking age I moved to Santa Clara, CA, to make my mark on Silicon Valley.

When memory components got hot, I was truly on my game, averaging $300,000 in sales monthly (which was huge in the 1970’s) and even booked the first half million dollar month on record for the company that employed me. It was inevitable that by the time I was approaching my 30’s, job burn out would set in. I had to get out of the high pressure corporate environment or totally lose my sanity.

For two decades I stayed away from the high tech world, learned a lot about myself, and more importantly, about my Creator and the work He had planned for me. That was when I began learning computer skills. I re-entered the high tech scene again, this time in the field of GPS tracking technology. My work demanded that I be able to learn new software quickly, create professional presentations, manage tremendous amounts of email and voice communications, and keep a detailed record of interactions with an ever increasing number of corporate contacts.

Within 4 days of my re-entry into the high tech business world,  I also made the decision to start my own business at home. The dual careers have complemented each other very well. I thrive on the excitement of the high tech workplace, and on the creative freedom I have in my home business. The synergy of the two, and constant exposure to the latest and greatest tools for creating content, managing information, branding, and promoting, have put me in a unique position to leverage the knowledge I have acquired, and use it to help others, as I help myself.

All things considered, I never planned to achieve any kind of greatness. I simply chose to do the things that brought me joy, and God, in His infinite grace, blessed me with the talent and the passion to use what I would learn to accomplish something of value. I find I am at total peace creating media presentations for programs at my church, developing an online bible study, helping new marketers to polish their skills, and mentoring young people as they make their way to adulthood. Looking back, I suppose God chose marketing as the vehicle for this journey to greatness, because it has empowered me to do great things for Him.

When you are centered in His will, the things you love will be the things He uses!

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