After graduating college with a degree in Applied Mathematics, I stared in the Insurance Industry. I worked for Occidental Life Insurance Co. in downtown Los Angeles in their actuarial program. The above picture is my office mates and me circa 1978 in our actuarial department. Larry Agin, the guy standing, was our boss. However, I soon realized this was not the life for me (I had sales in my blood!) and transferred to their Group Sales department.

Now that I was doing what I liked (sales) the next step was to sell a product that was more exciting then insurance. I was able to transition to component sales by quitting Occidental and going to work for Reed Electronic Marketing.

By working with component sales, I was exposed to opportunities to move into peripheral sales. I worked for Mannesmann Tally and briefly joined a start-up called Printek, but when an opportunity came along to join Fujitsu America, I jumped at it, which involved a relocation from Southern California to Northern California.

I started my career with Fujitsu in printer sales, but was able to broaden my expertise into mass storage sales. After eight years at Fujitsu, I moved on, working for such companies as Plasmon Data, Data General, QLogic, Vixel, and Infortrend.

I got into software sales, working for LynuxWorks, as a consultant for Devicescape, and for a ground-level start-up called Montilio.

But, after 35 years in Hi-Tech Sales, I decided a change of scenery was in order, and became an Accountant. I did taxes, bookkeeping and payroll. This was a nice way to end my career, where my last employer was a local payroll company - Pay 'n Time. But I finally retired in 2022 and am now enjoying my hobbies and my family full time!

In Fukushima, Japan in 1984. Working with the Fujitsu Ltd. team to win Apple's ImageWriter II business.

The Fujitsu booth at Comdex. Dave Liscom, Jim Cargilo, Jim Burton, and me.

Here's the lowdown on this coin: One of my summer jobs during college was to sell books door-to-door for the SouthWestern Publishing Company. They didn't pay us a salary, instead it was all 100% commission. We attended a week of intensive sales training and then we were assigned our territory. My territory was Central Massachusetts. At the conclusion of sales training, all of the Southwestern sales reps are given this coin. It is to sit in their pocket and remind them of their commitment and goals. Note the commitment to work 75 hours per week with the goal of giving 30 demonstrations per day to prospective buyers. That's twelve and a half hours per day ( 7:00 am to 7:30 pm), six days a week, knocking on doors and selling books. Ouch!