The Exchanges

Q Thank you for the introduction of your career. So what I'm really curious about is you decided to start this company in California and you're selling to the government, but how did you get on the government's radar? How did they know you existed so that you could do business with them?

A Sure. And that's probably the most Difficult aspect of dealing with the government. The first thing we did is we were aware of that general services administration, and at that time, we were able to work with a wonderful contractor at the government who actually was a big help to us in being able to get on that schedule, and we were able to do it ourselves with the help of a couple of employees, but we're able to do it ourselves, which is unusual. Today, most of the time, you need the expertise Of companies that specialize in helping you get on a GSA schedule. It takes usually more than a year today. It took us probably about four to six months to get on that schedule when we did it the first time. Once you're on the schedule, that does not automatically bring business to you. You still have to seek out the departments in the government that you think you can work with. Get to the right people who would be interested in your product. In our case, because my New York company had done some work with the Veterans Administration, that was my initial target. So I went after the VAs. There were just about a 105 when we started to do it, Veterans Administration medical centers, so the larger facilities. And we were able to contact the security directors, which today, unfortunately, they're very hidden, and they don't have a lot of time. But at that time, we were able to contact them. …

AI assessment note: “we were able to contact the security directors... invited to a conference in Las Vegas”

Q So why don't you tell us about what got you into business in the first place? And what your business is, and then we'll move forward from there.

A I was actually working for a small company way long ago, and my boss came to me because I'd been selling communications equipment. He said, how would you like to sell closed circuit television? And I said, closed circuit television? What, what is that different between that and a television camera? I mean, what do you mean? And he actually had to explain it to me. It was that new. And We called in a company to show us these new cameras. The company was called Philco. Very old radio company , I think out of Philadelphia, which is where their name comes from, and they showed us a camera that it's actually wider than I could show you on the screen. It was almost two feet in length, and it was full of tubes, but it worked, and I did end up selling a few of those cameras, and that was way long ago, but that was my introduction to closed-circuit TV. Many years later, I founded a business, and that business was selling Intercommunications equipment with some cameras. It was not easy to sell a lot of cameras back then, but I do recall some of the cameras that we sold, some of the customers, and I had to learn what they were using it for. Why did they actually want those cameras? We didn't think about theft prevention at that time. It was more a matter of an owner of a business just seeing his process, seeing what was going on, and that was what most of the cameras were doing. Now in th…

AI assessment note: “Many years later, I founded a business, and that business was selling Intercommunications equipment”

Q Veterans Affairs security directors. So you said in the very beginning you were able to start calling them and you pitched them. And this was before you got into the conference where you were able to talk to a lot of them at one time. Did you successfully sell any of them before you went to the conference that first time? And how did you sell them if you did?

A Yes, we were successfully selling some of them. Um, what I was doing, or we were doing, is making mailings. That was how we initially contacted them. We were making interesting kind of mailings. At that time, there were greeting cards. Company, I think, was called Slim Jim, and they were doing a card that was kind of long instead of the usual shape. I picked up on that idea, and I was able to contract With someone who could design the cards and do drawings on the cards as I wanted them, and we were doing what looked like a greeting card when it arrived in the mail, but inside it, we didn't fool them into, let's say, a straight pitch. What we did was we did an amusing pitch. We did something that made sense for what would be a greeting card, so it was funny. Uh, sometimes, most of the time, it dealt with theft. And it just had something amusing, except for one. There was one that a few people objected to, only one of those cards. It had to do with the holiday stealing season, because there is such a thing. We know that October, November, uh, and especially December, thefts increase considerably, uh, whether people need more money for the holidays, and they're stealing more, uh, whatever the reasons. So I did one of the cards That did involve the holiday stealing season. Showed someone kind of like this holding onto the bars of his prison cell. Somebody didn't like that, but most…

AI assessment note: “Yes, we were successfully selling some of them. Um, what I was doing, or we were doing, is making mailings.”