It was during this time that Don started a popup travel business with his roommate and began planning weekend adventures for the students. “It was amazing that we were actually able to rent busses, book hotels and restaurants and put together travel packages that sold out within hours.” remembers Don. “And we were able to pull it all off even though our sponsoring hotel offered their own versions of these trips…we just knew everything about our customers since they were our fellow students and we understood them better than anyone else! The hotel knew little about their prospect and it was their downfall. It’s was a lesson learned that is still valid today.
You simply must know everything you can about your target audience.

Don returned to the Semester at Sea program a year later and this time visited every U.S. Department of Commerce in the local cities he visited. This was in order to give them his business card, on the back of which the words were printed “Contact me if you want your product to sell like hotcakes in the U.S.A.”. This led to a string of successful imports from popular Rambo survival knives to Razor aluminum scooters.

Don has always been intrigued with the mail order business and he found great success in offering his products direct to the consumer through printed ads in the backs of magazines. “It’s great to be paid up-front” claimed Don as with mail order, the check arrives before you even ship the product.

It wasn’t long before Don was able to find success as a product broker for many of the top mail order catalog companies. His list of clients included The Sharper Image, Damark, Heartland of America and Hammacher Schlemmer to name a few. Don found himself brokering 20′ and 40′ container loads of products to these companies and never had to take physical possession of the goods. “I was blown away when I realized I could write a back-to-back Letter of Credit and not have any skin in the game. I literally used my customer’s money to finance the deals”.

In 1996 Don’s eyes were wide open. He saw the future and it was online commerce. He read everything he could get his hands on in regards to learning the language of the internet, HTML and began hand coding his first websites. He was especially interested in how to get AOL and Netscape to place his banner ads on their websites - a popular traffic tactic that still has merits today.

But then along came Google.

Google changed everything.

Virtually overnight, anyone could go online and search for a product and immediately locate the contact details for Chinese manufacturers. That information was previously only found by subscribing to little-known and expensive trade publications or by having an “in” with foreign trade organizations. So when someone “Googled” a particular product name, Google saw it fit to show the manufacturer’s website for said product rather than the home page of the guy who imported and sold thousands of those products to buyers. Needless to say, the advent of the search engine Google made Don’s complete business model obsolete. Corporate buyers began buying direct from China and Chinese manufacturers were less willing to give importers exclusive rights deals since they had so many more potential customers.

Don has always had a keen interest in real estate and decided to pursue his license in order to better assist other agents in finding qualified buyers and sellers.

With his expertise in marketing and funnel building, he had a strong understanding of how to generate these leads and connect agents with potential clients. His unique approach to lead gen has helped agents to grow their businesses and to achieve the success they dream of in the careers.

He is a frequent Distinguished Speaker at the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the USC Marshall School of Business and is available for public speaking engagements.