I am Parthiv Shah, and this is
my story.
Now I know
you are sitting there thinking to yourself “Hey,
this guy is spot on right, but what am I going to
do? How am I going to jump start my attitude and my
business? I am motivated to turn this around but I
can’t do this by myself. I need ideas, working
capital, and most of all, I need help! Well, let me
be your KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOUR!
So, exactly who is your KNIGHT
IN SHINING ARMOUR?
This would be me, Parthiv Shah! Before I tell you how I will help you grow your business again, and quickly I might add, let me tell you a little about me first.
The most important thing to know
about me is that you are lucky I don’t write the
same way I speak or else you will be sitting there
with a dictionary. Where I come from the letter T is
pronounced like a D, you can’t figure out if I’m
using a P or a B and finally, I can’t pronounce my
W’s except in one word which you will see in a short
30 seconds.
So instead of me telling you
about myself……………….
I would be delling you about
myself……………..
Instead of me addressing you on
the phone by saying
Hi, How are you?……. ……………………………………..
I would be saying,” It is most
bleasant for me do be dalking do you. “
When we get to speak or finally
meet each other in person, I might say something
like” Wait, I want to understand what you mean!
Except that when I say this it
will sound something like this. “Vait, I vant to be
understanding vhat you are meaning buddy.”
After all, I am a Wegetarian (You
guessed it, this is the only word where I can
pronounce my W) and I am guessing this causes me do
be sbeaking this vay! Vun more
ting. I am somevhat vertically challenged, standing
a vhopping 5’5” dall and a little vide around the
middle. I dell you this in all seriousness so that
when we meet the first time you won’t be stretching
your neck to look up at me because you won’t find me
there, but if you point your eyes downward, you
can’t miss me and this my friend will allow me to
get right to the point of the meeting which is how I
can motivate you and turn around your business
immediately.
Now that you have had a good
laugh, it’s time for me to be very serious again. I
came to this country from India 22 years ago, along
with my entire family and we settled in suburbs of
Boston Massachusetts. At the time I was in the
Indian Air Force. We only had a few computers in the
Air Force in those days but I have to admit that
this was the beginning of my fascination with them.
My job was to type the ‘daily orders’ and then print
them on a ‘Dot Matrix” printer without ribbons which
I would then duplicate on something known as a
Cyclostyle Duplicator. This was my first exposure to
working on ‘mass communications.’
I was working at an office supply
company as a Marketing Manager waiting for my
immigration visa. At that time, in 1989 I met a
salesman from Xerox, India who gave me a book,
“Marketing Management” by Dr. Philip Kotler. I
became even more interested in Marketing as a
profession after reading this book. It is still one
of my favorite books ever and offers many timeless
principles of Marketing. When I went to Bentley
College for my MBA in 1994 this book was our class
room text book. When I started teaching marketing at
University of Phoenix, this book became my classroom
text book.
My first job in the United States
was marketing for a Health Club. After generating
multiple leads in high foot traffic locations, I
would have to cold call interested potential members
and was able generate many sales. I then moved on to
work for a Telemarketing firm and introduced a
software product, Telemagic to management, which
they adopted for their business.
My coworkers made fun of me and would laugh telling
me all the while that it was a huge time waster.
However, I pointed out that the software, along with
the computer, was like owning a “Thousand Dollar
Rolodex”. The owner of the company was also a
Professor at Bentley College in Boston and convinced
me to get my MBA in marketing which I did, from
Bentley College in 1994. I wrote many papers on
Direct Marketing, Database Marketing, and Direct
Mail Marketing on the way to my degree. One of the
assignments in my New Product Development class was
to create a product and a Marketing plan. I
developed a mailing list to the Indian Community in
America. This was my first introduction of ‘CRM.’
(Customer Response Marketing)
Over the next twelve years I
continued to develop and expand my skills in ‘CRM’.
All the while, my company invested heavily in my continuing education. I took a Dale Carnegie training course, Tony Robbins Seminar, Sandler Institute courses etc. My company even hired a speech Pathologist to teach me how to pronounce my letters and words the correct “American Way”. (Okay dokee, so I wasn’t great at everything. I still can’t pronounce some of my letters and words correctly, but this hasn’t stopped me from succeeding or thousands of customers form buying from me).
As I continued to take on more
responsibility, I decided that I would make it
easier for me to find potential clients by becoming
my own resident list expert and realized that I
could provide a needed service to our clients so I
began to buy and sell data for our clients.
I struck out on my own in year
but my business failed miserably. Broke and in debt
up to my eyeballs, I went back to my old company and
asked for my job back, plus convinced my boss to
give me a substantial raise to pay off my debt. He
gave me a short leash but was well rewarded when
almost immediately I closed a $400,000 deal with
Children’s Hospital. I was back on track but, like
most entrepreneurial people, I got the bug to strike
out on my own once again.
I opened Listlaunchers, Boston’s
premier list brokerage company assisting the
Printing Industry, Direct Mail firms, and
Telemarketing Companies. From this I learned a
dynamic new way of printing content; Igenizing
Offset Printing Jobs which brought in much higher
profits. The jobs that were selling for $7500 were
now selling for upwards of $12,000. Our sales
tripled in 3 years.
In 2005 I sold Listlaunchers and
became a part of a larger conglomerate only to have
an IPO fail, and once again put myself and my family
in debt up to our eyeballs.
In 2006 I started Elaunchers.com
and once again had to start over again. The
difference now is that I know exactly what I am
doing and I’m relying on me to make the decisions. I
have taken everything I have learned about
Marketing, Technology, List Generation, and success
and failure and rolled it into one super dynamic
company. Oh yes, one more thing! I am now myself a
Professor of Marketing and E-Business at the
University of Phoenix.
This is my story. It is a classic entrepreneur’s story: Start with little or nothing, turn it into something, then back again to nothing and once again turn it into something successful. The difference is that this time, I really know what I’m doing and I will show you how what I know will make you more successful then ever before.