My First Job

Current gig: chairman, chief executive officer and president of Fort Myers-based FindWhat.com, an Internet marketing firm, and co-founder of FindWhat.com's pre-decessor, BeFirst.

"When I was going to school in Gainesville, I started working in sales for a cellular phone company. It was a very small outfit with four to five salespeople and two installers. We sold car phones and those big-brick phones. Six months into this part-time occupation, I gave the owner a proposition: Either we become partners or I'm going to be your competitor. I quit school in 1991 and we went into business together at Excellular Mobile Systems; we grew quite quickly to 13 sales reps relying heavily on one account that made up the vast majority of our revenue. We also had a pager business. Then we started seeing places like Sam's Wholesale Club selling cellular phones for $10 and realized we would not be able to compete, so I sold my portion of the company and moved back to Fort Myers and started what is now FindWhat.com. My first job was my first taste of success. The lesson I learned was never, ever rely on one primary source of revenue in your business, and always watch competitive industry movements."