Being born in America is the single greatest gift God gave me. There were nearly 3 billion people on the planet when I arrived — I could have been born anywhere, into anything. Instead, I was born here.
My great-grandfather was a coal miner in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Two generations later, our family had built all of this.
Don't let anyone tell you the United States isn't the greatest country on earth.
That's exactly why the whole world has always wanted to come here.
I was a dyslexic, shy kid — but I had goals.
From fifteen years old, I wanted my own business one day. At twenty-nine, after my first divorce,
I couldn't even raise a $500 loan to marry Kara. And yet here I am.
It is God's will that every one of my goals came true, the business, the freedom, and most of all, finding
and marrying a partner as amazing as Kara.
The good Lord presented me with opportunities I never could have created myself, and I am living proof of what grace can do with a shy, dyslexic kid who refused to stop dreaming.
At fifty, I sold my business and walked away — not because I was smart enough to engineer it alone,
but because the good Lord opened doors I couldn't have opened myself. Each step built on the next.
None could be missed. Every one of them propelled me toward success,
and gave me the confidence to dream big and see it through.
Each empowering step!
Empowerment #1 - 1972
Outward Bound
One of my High School teachers up at Loony Lanes must have seen something in me — because she sponsored me for a full scholarship to Outward Bound in Ely, Minnesota, the winter course. We trained in brutal cold, sometimes thirty below zero. We slept alone in the wilderness overnight. We skied a full week across the rugged, frozen lakes of the north country. That course built character in a young man who desperately needed confidence — and it gave me something no classroom ever could.
Empowerment #3 - 1972 - 1982
Pickwich Records
I spent ten years at Pickwick Records, starting on the warehouse floor filling bins with records, to eventually becoming the Sales Manager for the Los Angeles branch. Those ten years were my real education: learning how to, and how not to run a business. Every hard-won lesson became a tool I would one day use to build something of my own. The pay was never great with Pickwick, but you got free records and concerts from time to time!
Empowerment #2 - 1976
Dale Carnegie Course
My dad had taken the Dale Carnegie course in his own youth, and I imagine he recognized something in his shy son that needed the same medicine. He was right. That course became a stepping stone I didn't know I needed — one more piece in the foundation of everything that came after.
Empowerment - #4 - 1977
Barbizon Modeling School
After my first wife left, I needed to invest in myself again. So I signed up for Barbizon Modeling School. Pickwick had given me the fundamentals of business — but confidence isn't only built in boardrooms. How you look, how you carry yourself, how you walk into a room matters too. It worked exactly as I hoped it would.
Empowerment - #5 - 1979
Kara Dilucido
I met my soulmate at twenty-eight, and I was lucky enough to find a partner who would trust me, empower me, and stand behind every reach I made for my goals. God brought me Kara. Without her support, I would never have reached the goals I set for myself — she was the ground I stood on to climb.
Our story can be read in my autobiography.
Empowerment - #6 - 1982
Dynasound
With Kara's support, I reached higher than I ever had — I answered an ad for a Western Regional Sales Manager, double my current pay, plus benefits. That chapter only lasted eight months. But it taught me something no paycheck could: I knew my value. And I would never doubt it again.
Empowerment - #7 - 1983
Blackbourn
Blackbourn hired me as their L.A. sales rep, selling binders and audio-visual packaging. What a lucky break this was — the kind that doesn't just teach you sales, it teaches you how to sell at the highest level. I closed accounts like Walt Disney, and I never looked at my own potential the same way again.
Empowerment - #8 - 1984 - 1985
Walt Disney
I was basically handed the lead into Walt Disney. But when I learned their current vendor was stepping away to pursue their own work, I knew — that was no coincidence, that was an act of God. My first order alone was over $500,000, and the orders never stopped. Two years running, Disney's business put $100,000 in commission in my pocket and earned me Salesman of the Year. This was life-changing.
Empowerment - #9 - 1986
Software Publishing and Packaging
After Blackboard closed the Pomona plant, I took a job with a local broker, and he filled in what I didn't know — printing, duplication, assembly. Packaging was already mine.
Empowerment - #10 - 1987 - 2003
Multi Media Publishing & Packaging
When SPPI got into financial trouble, Kara and I faced a decision that would define the rest of my career: start my own company. I took his name and made it mine, Multi Media instead of Software, and built on the systems I already knew worked. It was terrifying — real risk, real stakes. But we were profitable from the first month, and the growth never slowed. By the time I sold MMPP, we were packaging for eight of the top ten infomercial companies in the industry.
Empowerment - #11 - 1988 - 1995
Hooked On Phonics
This company changed my life. Through my company MMPP, I manufactured every product Hooked On Phonics ever created and sold, even their stationery, even their credit cards. It was total madness, manufacturing everything a billion-dollar company put out into the world, out of a spare bedroom. I had to hire more people to take care of all our other customers. I worked with Sean Shanahan until the company went bankrupt. But this account brought everything I had learned — Pickwick, Blackbourn, Disney, every hard lesson — together into one place. It changed my life. It's the reason I could sell my business and retire at fifty, just as the good Lord intended.
Retirement
2003
I read that retirement was a dying man's game — that retiring at fifty was a reckless bet. I set out to prove that wrong. What keeps you alive is passion, and I filled every minute of these years with it: travel, hiking, mountain biking, kayaking, waterfalls, mountain peaks, and loving my soulmate of forty-six years. I am seventy-three now, twenty-three years into this retirement, and I'm still looking forward to every adventure the good Lord has yet to bring me.