About John L Webster 2nd

Growing Up — The Foundational Years

I was very lucky to be born into a family of nerds and geeks. My dad and his brothers all grew up playing in my grandfather’s television and appliance repair business. As a very young child I can remember my dad buying the latest gadgets when they came on the market. I was able to hang out with my uncle Dave when he was tinkering with electronic gizmos. They say I take after my uncle Ralph, he had both a talent for art, as well as, being highly intelligent in math and Science.

I really came into my own, when at the ripe old age of 10, I got my hands on a Radio Shack TRS80 computer. I had so much fun playing with this machine; I was learning BASIC programming, animating ascii characters with early movie making software and making primitive images out of blocks that were either on or off. From that moment all the way through my high school years, I was able to participate in the “Big Bang” of the personal computer era. Finally, as I was leaving my childhood, in true left brain / right brain fashion, I won a scholastic art award AND was named the top computer programming student in the state of Pennsylvania.

The Journey — Honing My Skills

Going into college I had no idea what direction to go. With my skill set and talents, engineering seemed like a natural choice. I spent two years studying physics, math, programming and science. I did quite well, but could not see myself sitting in a cube crunching numbers for the rest of my life. Then, somewhere close to when I was going to transfer to a four year college, I got to play in the new computer art lab. Man! that was fun. After that I got my first MAC and changed my major.

You can see on the right I have had a bunch of jobs along the way. Each of them playing a crucial role in growing me in areas college cannot begin to teach. At Morgan Products, I was blessed to work with a director of marketing that gave me more leash than I deserved. Just when I thought I would merge well into corporate life, my best friend told me about this exciting new video game startup company. I packed up and went to chase a childhood dream of making games. IXmortis was the game, not many have heard of it, we ran out of money before it was finished. Back home to Pennsylvania I came. Fortunately, I landed a position managing a graphics and display company, owned by a contact I made working at Morgan. Then at an ancient 30 years old, I decided I wanted to get paid for results not hours and set out to get a job that paid either commissions or bonuses based on performance. It’s funny, finding a commission only job was very easy. My time with Keystone Displays was just amazing; it built emotional intelligence, it humbled me—as I was no longer the boss and finally my boss allowed me the freedom to develope residual income streams in our industry. Finally, on this journey to self employment, I was able to work at a web development company. This was the perfect next step in building results oriented marketing programs for clients. I found it truly amazing how internet technology could be used to track and refine marketing programs. It was both exciting and sad to leave that company to create my own marketing and internet technology consulting firm.

You Are Here — What I’m Doing Now

Well here we are — A Technology Driven Marketing Professional. To be honest I made this up. It was the best phrase I could use to describe what I am doing. Think of your marketing message like a mortar shell and me and my technology as the spotter. Every time you fire a barrage of marketing at the target, I use computers, the internet, telephone technology and a pinch of common sense to analyze the results. Together we team up to assess and adjust each phase of your marketing program, resulting in a marketing program that begins to hit the target more and more consistently.

I have really gotten my freedom. I get to work in a variety of offices; my home office – surrounded by my kids, my two Panera Bread locations and right next to my clients at their offices. My Dell laptop and I love to be on the go, building awesome marketing programs using internet technology.