Phase 2 of an IT Career:   Transition

My time in Alaska provided the incubation period for the start of my IT career.    This began with time at the National Weather Service as a computer operator, giving me exposure to some of the first business PC's as well as a Prime minicomputer system.   A year at Computerland followed and we terrific experience.   Another year at the Radio Shack Business Computer Center in Anchorage followed, and then time as a combined office/accounting/systems manager at a construction company.    

This was all valuable business and systems experience to add to six semesters of school before dropping out to live the computer revolution full time.   

These first couple of years were not just about a massive amount of technology-related learning, but also about honing my sales skills - skills that would be a primary focus of the next 20 years as I would become a kind of "technie salesman", or a technical person who could also sell.     On both quests I was somewhat on my own;  good mentorship in sales was to come later, as would good collaboration on the technology side.   While much of the selling I did was "smaller ticket" (less than $5k in early 80's dollars), I also did a fair amount of higher-ticket solution sales of complete systems for business, in the $20-$50k range.   

...

My last ten months in Alaska was a difficult time.   

My relationship and marriage to my high school sweetheart was ending ugly; it was a mess.    We had no kids, which was a major blessing.     

i'd  left the industry that I loved to work with a customer - something I ended up being thankful for, not only because of the business experience but the good folks at that company became close friends that helped me through this difficult period.   Mike, Corrie Chris and George have been my friends for most of my life now and as it happens we're all practically neighbors at least some of the time, just a short ferry ride away.    

In 1984,   I bought my first Mac and decided it was time for me to leave the Great Land.   Alaska was at the beginning of a very tough economic period, which would feature (along with Houston, Texas) one of the biggest real estate crashes in U.S. history.    Can you guess who had purchased an overpriced condo at 17% interest in 1983?  Good times.

I left Alaska on my birthday in December 1984.   I landed "back home" with my brother Keith and his wife Kitty back in my Washington home town of Marysville.    

Needing work, I applied for two jobs and received offers from both.    I was in a down and doubtful frame of mind and was not overly diligent in my job search.    I turned down a job at the Seattle U district Radio Shack Computer Center (I felt that Tandy was getting off track with their PC clones and direction).    

Very fortunate was my acceptance of  a position  with a small chain of stores based In Everett, Washington.    I didn't know it at the time of course, but this job would have a tremendous impact on my future, my approach to doing business, entrepreneurship - and within a few months, I'd meet and hire my wife of 30 years and counting.    But I'm jumping ahead.

The owner of the company, Gary, was a very successful entrepreneur.   I would later learn that he was a renaissance man - the kind of guy that could (and did) build his own house as well as run a thriving company.    He had a keen eye for quality.   He was also one tough son of a gun, but had a great sense of humor once you got him laughing.    He told great stories of his rowdy past - which he'd set aside to have a family, which was the most important thing to him.   He was a religious man, but neither pressed his faith on others nor required it of them.

Gary's business had been primarily sales to consumers through the stores, and an educational business to school districts that continues to this day.   He was looking for someone with experience in business sales with the IBM computer line that he'd brought on but not had much success with, and that was my "in". 

I learned more about business from Gary in a few months than all my previous years of work combined.    The PC business -  business to consumer, business, and government - were all far more competitive in "the lower 48" than in Alaska.   The first thing I learned from Gary was how to calculate prices based on gross margin.   In Alaska, sales were all list-price based.    We went on from there.

Gary became a mentor and a friend, and would one day become a partner in business.    

So, within a few short weeks I'd left my home and job in Alaska and had embarked on a few adventure back in my home town.    The next phase of my IT career had started.

My tales of Alaska are not over by a good sight, and  we'll visit there from time to time.  In Alaska, I'd learned much that carried me far in my career:   

Sales skills as a "straight commission" sales rep

Multiple PC platforms - Apple, IBM, TRS-80, Fortune, Osbourne, Atari

Operating Systems - CP/M, MS-DOS, TRSDOS, Unix, Xenix

Software - Various Accounting; Word Processors, Visicalc, Lotus 1-2-3, Multiplan (forerunner of Excel), Supercalc, Dbase II, IDOL

Programming Languages - Basic, Business Basic, Fortran, some assembly

More PC games than you can imagine.

I had 2 1/2 years in the industry under my belt when I left AK.