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I had become confident enough in myself after the last five years that I was going to put myself back into my profession, computer technology, one way or the other. I started my own one-man ad agency specializing in Hi-Tech clientele. I had the management, production and technical backround. Despite all of the cost accounting I had done, I had always had someone else managing the money at the top. I didn't realize this however. I was able to organize the resources, make the contacts, get the clients, put together the projects, but when it came to the end goal, I didn't have a clue as to what to do with it. I had no perspective, no backround in money management. You can make money for a company, keep it's costs in line, develope products and monitor production, but what do you do with the money once its made? I had always been insulated from that aspect of business. The small agency grew and made money but one bad money move by one client put me out of business. I didn't have the capital to cover a single broken contract.
After closing the one-man agency, I made signs, got some carpentry jobs, got a long term contract with a local magazine for graphic production. Underneath all this, though, I started on a project which I had thought up when I worked in San Francisco. I got some of my IBM friends together and a new PC-XT. While at California Rural Legal Services, I had an idea for a program to generate programs. It was an extrapolation of the dissolution processing system. I learned to work in a few databases, and taught myself BASIC. I had the product concept, the guys had the practical backround and I did the grunt work when I wasn't out making a living. The project started to take shape. I realized that the PC was here to stay and decided that anything I did, it had to be able to work on a PC. I had to become a PC pro. |
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