I was so excited to learn about the SteemIt platform and community just a couple of weeks ago. I thought I knew all the cool stuff on the internet, but somehow, I missed this hidden jewel.
I studied "Management Information Systems" for my Masters Degree way back in 1981. That's when computers were just beginning to move out of the math department into the business schools, and modems were connected by acoustic couplers to your phone receiver The IBM PC was announced just after I finished that degree, so it goes to show that you really need to learn to learn while you are in school, because things will change.
My first exposure to programming was in high school (about 1977 or 78) when an engineer visited our home in Seminole, Tx. My Dad worked for an oil company, and Seminole in is the heart of the Permian Basin. After years in North Dakota and the life of oil-field gypsies, we landed there.
[Google map of Seminole, TX - all the little white spots are where there are oil wells.]
The engineer let me play with his HP-67 programmable calculator, and somehow I just knew what to do with it. It had a small magnetic card that you could swipe to read or to save programs. I read the manual and had it doing some algebraic or trig functions in no time, and I was hooked. I never had a TRS-80, Comodore, PET, or Atari like many who started during this time period.
[And yes, I owned a slide rule, but didn't really need it]
I always said I'd never work for an oil company, especially the one that my Dad worked for. But when they offered me a good salary to work in their IT department, guess what? I took it, and moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma where I stayed about 12 years. I was very active in the singles department at a large downtown church and become a deacon there at age 27. I even served as part-time interim single "minister" for about a year. For those that are techie and care, I worked with COBOL, CICS, and became an expert on IDMS Databases, Focus and SAS.
My first entrepreneurial leap was when my accountant/friend and I tried to launch a bank reconciliation program called "BankRecs." I left the safety of the big Fortune 50 oil company, and lived off my 401K - until it ran out. I think we were ahead of our time, and we knew little about marketing. The banks of course weren't online, and those of us that were online were using Prodigy, Compuserve, and Genie (or bulletin boards) at probably 2400 or 9600 BAUD (read: SLOW access).
The next years lead me into consulting in Naples, Florida and San Juan, Puerto Rico, then decided to head back to Texas, and chose Dallas as my new home in 1996. I got something called "Intenet in a Box" from Sprynet in Florida, and started spending hours on the internet. I knew that the "internet was my oyster." About that time, I started learning Hebrew from various books and tapes, and I realized that there should be a computer program that could integrate the words and say them, allow a student to practice and then hear a confirmation when he or she clicked on the word. This lead to my first software product "At Home with Hebrew". It was never a barn burner, but I sold over $100,000 over it a 10 year period.
Selling a product online got me into internet marketing. I soon added Pimsleur's Hebrew, and then said to myself: "Why not sell other Pimsleur languages". I put up another website, and went on to sell over $1 million of that product over about two years. I think i was the first to bundle all three levels (for example, Pimsleur 1, 2, and 3 of Spanish - regularly sold separately, for one discounted price). Times changed, and the Pimsleur business petered out. I'm currently starting to revamp and redeploy my Hebrew course as an online, gamified, website that also provides the full interaction on smartphones and tablets, and uses the latest A.I. voice recognition.
That in turn, got me into Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I was on the first page for my Hebrew program, but then one year, Google changed, and now my ranking slipped down several pages, resulting in little to no sales. This lead me to joining a group called OMG and studying SEO for the last four years, and I started offering the service to others through my website: http://IrvingSEOExpert.com. I'm in the final stage of getting my first SEO book on Amazon, so I'll let you know about that soon.
When I'm not doing Internet Marketing, I have two other passions. One is eating, which still requires me to work in the corporate world doing Microsoft BizTalk B2B and Integration (but that's another SteemIt post). My marketing is still up and down, and does not yet provide the llifestyle to which I have become accustomed (or should I say enslaved). My goal is to move to full time SEO and Internet Marketing as soon as possible. My second passion is Jewish studies. Wait Neal, didn't you tell above, that you were a deacon in a church? Well, yes. I made the switch and converted.
It's amazing what studying Hebrew can do to you! I started taking modern Hebrew classes online with Hebrew College in Boston. Then I took another class, and another class until they told me I couldn't take any more classes without officially applying to their program. I wasn't in a hurry to get my fourth college degree, so after about eight years, in 2103, at age 53, I had a Master of Arts in Jewish Studies with 44 hours of credits and an investment of about $50,000. As you can tell this was for personal fulfillment not to make money.
With Judaism, as with life, you are never done studying. The word "Torah" can refer to just the five books of Moses, or to all of mankind's accumulated knowledge and wisdom; and it is all interrelated. There is no such things as coincidence, but the year I finished Hebrew College, a school in Israel called Web Yeshiva, offered new program, for those interested in becoming Rabbis or just improving their knowledge in Jewish laws and customs (so far, I'm in the latter group). Well guess, what - I just finished my fourth year of that! I love kabbalah too, and have done my fair share of studying the mind, personal development, UFOs/aliens, and other esoteric topics; and now of course the cryptocurrencies and ecosystems.
Over the years, I've had different names in different markets, including MrBiztalk and MrHebrew. But now, I'm thinking about branding myself Neal-the-Analytical. Based on the above, do you think the name fits? I have the analytical and studious personality type, and love to learn and teach. The downside of being super-analytical is that it sometimes make a person a slow-mover, but I'm working on that.
As a Microsoft BizTalk consult, I've worked in some fun places like Ft. Lauderdale, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Colorado Springs, and Boston. I've been based in the Dallas area for 20 years while living out of town in those places.
I hope I have whetted your appetite to follow-me on SteemIt. I believe that I have a lot to both learn and share on this amazing community.
Neal-the-Analytical, aka Neal Walters or Nataniel Ben Avaraham