Acreage land – supervise all aspects from initial identification, seller negotiations, through rezoning and entitlement, to finding a buyer and closing the sale.

Built a team of specialists for rezoning, special use permits, development entitlements, strict regulatory and environmental constraints, soil science, road engineering, archaeological / wildlife / vegetation studies, architects, appraisers, topography, surveys, hydrology studies, digital mapping, and more.

Spilled pint of Guinness launches publishing rebel!

When a tourist knocked a fresh pint over Hartman’s notes for a new guitar book, ruining his research, this sparked an idea … Beer-proof instruction guides!

After many long, hard hours of late-night research in cozy Irish pubs, we finally perfected the format.

We’ve since sold over 10 million books, with over 1,000 titles in six languages around the world.

Our team pioneered downloadable books, mass-personalizable books and books distributed over phones. One book was downloaded over 240,000 times in three days — a record.

We even created a SAAS model … in 1999!

Hats off to Peter Staunton, Pat Fogarty, Albert DePetrillo, Rob Condon and the rest of the Guru Gang. Ten points to Gryffindor!

Authored dozens of books, and was lucky to have met many celebrity authors and co-authors.

We even developed a ski instruction guide with Franz Klammer, the Olympic champion who is fearless on the hill — but in person, down to earth and a great guy.
Below is a link to his gold-winning run — his grit and persistence is inspirational.

Multiple awards in print, phone content, and customer service. For example, Alberto-Culver used a Guru Book giveaway with its client Dollar-General… and won DG’s Vendor of the Year for the campaign.

One of the most interesting projects involved a behind-the-scenes look at McDonald’s and how it innovates automation whenever possible, in order to improve service to some 25 million customers per day in the U.S. Talk about scale! This focus has had a direct impact when we strive to automate and expedite every single step in the land rezoning process.

Ran trade show exhibitions in London, Frankfurt, Chicago, and Los Angeles, among others.

New national radio station founded by Riverdance creators Moya Doherty and John McColgan. Investors and board members included Irish entertainment and media industry leaders. Moya and John are inspirational entrepreneurs, having turned their halftime show for Eurovision into a global touring phenomenon seen by over 25 million people! This was also fascinating as it was based in downtown Dublin, during the “Celtic Tiger” growth period in Ireland.

Leading radio station launched by Jacobs award-winning Dan Collins. The station won (and continues to win) prestigious awards for its quality broadcasting. This was an especially interesting position working directly with the Board of Directors who were all investors in the company, and leading business people in the area. As such it was immersion training in Irish business practices.

Film and television production based in Zurich, Switzerland. A terrific opportunity to learn the business side of the European film and TV industry — especially because, coming from a smaller country, Condor’s president Peter-Christian Fueter typically had to initiate and secure co-production partners in France, Germany, UK, Italy, etc. in order to package and produce a project. He travels to meetings in Berlin, London and Paris with the same ease as we might go to Starbucks!

Academy Award, Journey of Hope, Best Foreign Language Film, Co-producer (and got to take my parents to the Oscars ceremony!)

Tennessee Nights, starring Johnny Cash, Julian Sands, Stacey Dash, Co-producer (what an honor to meet and work with Johnny Cash!)

Quicker than the Eye, starring Ben Gazzara and Mary Crosby, Associate producer

Attend film and TV trade shows in Cannes, Milan, and London. Fond memories of negotiating a film licensing deal at an outdoor cafe on the Promenade de la Croisette, with a life-size replica pirate ship (from a movie about to be released) moored just offshore in the Mediterranean harbor.

Production management role, liaison between independent production companies and Paramount studios.
This included various TV series and special projects.
One highlight was meeting Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and doing some work on Star Trek – The Next Generation.