Bill Span

phone  425.827.2431 

email: bill_span@yahoo.com


 

My early entry into marketing on the web began with the launch of the browser 23 years ago and has never stopped except
for one week in April 2015 where I threw a Player's Reunion Party to Honor the Legends of North Carolina Football and Wrestling.

If you would like to be invited to our next party -  go to this page and fill out the form.

_________________________

In early 1992 my friends and I launched the American pre-paid phone card industry forcing long distance to soon be almost free.

I started at beginning with company that invented the industry and the financial model of "Pre-Paid": AmeriVox.

The German Supreme Court requested my presence to testify as
an expert witness in 2012 to settle a huge patent dispute.

The evidence I provided was key to winning a telecom patent lawsuit over who started the prepaid phone card technology.
The legal team and I proved the phone card was invented by the company I launched over 20 years ago, AmeriVox.
We broke the patent claim of telecom giant IDT. The victory in this precedent setting case allows anyone to produce
and sell any brand of phone card they want throughout the entire European Union. Pictures of that adventure are here.

I developed and launched three groundbreaking cutting edge web technologies. One was an early Facebook in 1996. 
Another an early Twitter in 1998, and the third was an early LinkedIn in 1999.

I've always specialized in internet lead generation, data and relationship marketing.  Now in my 23rd web year,
I'm a pioneer of internet marketing using social networks, telecom, email and video.

Our
early deployment of the prepaid phone card was the prime cause the rapid decrease in long distance rates from 1992 to 1996.

My 8,000 member sales team sold millions of phone cards and changed communication forever. We were the deregulating force
that made long distance calls cheap and now almost free. A true disruption technology spread by the people to the people.

To learn more about what we can do together, please get in touch!

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In early 2007 I assembled a team of world class marketers to launch and fund new companies via video:  The Branding Foundry.

That team included Rowland Hanson, who named Windows for Bill Gates and the legendary Rick Cesari who launched all these: 
The George Foreman Grill, OxiClean, SonicCare, Juice Man, and now, the most fantastic way of all: GoPro.

The site we created to display business videos online which was to be the "YouTube for Business" was: BizTube.com

The Seattle Times published this article about us and the Puget Sound Business Journal wrote this.

Late 2007 to 2010 - Formed SpokesGuide.com -  This company gave the name to the video walkouts on webpages. We shot actors against green screens and they would show up on web pages outside of the video box. We hired the actors, wrote the scripts, produced, directed and shot the scenes for scores of American businesses to make their websites come alive with a Video Guide who was their Spokes Person. Today we've migrated to the Motion Graphics style which you can see here.

2008 - Connected the matchmaking to fund MicroBlend Technologies. MicroBlend is changing the way house paint is created and sold worldwide. When the company came to us, they were in a couple of mom and pop hardware stores and badly needed massive funding. Now with more than 40 million dollars in funding and with the right people on their board, they are in large retailers and are on their way to becoming our second global success story in disruption technology, much like the AmeriVox phone card was to long distance calling. A big expansion program is currently going on in Colombia.

Our third disruption technology that will change the way fuel burns in engines and how they are cooled is: Plasma Drive.

Disruptive technology number four is being created by a team lead by John Searl. See an excerpt from my interview with them.

In 1992 I started using emerging new technology to communicate and grow a  large AmeriVox sales team. I recruited salespeople through the earliest use affiliate websites, business data, broadcast fax, broadcast email and very primitive predictive dialers.

These very first affiliate websites date back to early 1992 and were spawned off the BBS system. It was truly groundbreaking.

Clients like 3M sold Post-It notes used our customized phone cards as premiums and incentives. We had exclusive worldwide licensing deals with Elvis Presley, JFK, Norman Rockwell, Wyland, and dozens of other celebrities.

In 1996 I formed first pure Internet company, FIRST Technologies, Inc. Partnered with developer DC Wiseman, to create
the first interactive, self generating websites where sales people could upload their pictures and info creating their own webpages.
They also had their own branded web mail accounts and interacted in chatrooms and message boards enabling any sales group
to become a virtual community. It was a precursor to Facebook, but built exclusively for sale teams.

The FIRST Technologies software was demonstrated to the current CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, in early 1996.
It was VERY favorably received with great enthusiasm by Ballmer and may have inspired certain products you see today out of Redmond, right here next to Kirkland - where I live today.

I talk about the last 5 years of my Sales, Branding and Biz Video Experiences in the movie above

 

The above video is about my 20 year marketing career on the web, the one below is much more exciting.

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Links to internet marketing articles and a story we told that started the American prepaid phone card industry.

_______________________

 

The above video is some recently discovered Super 8 home movies of my oceanic career with some great music by the Ramones.

Turn it up loud!

The scenes are from the 70's and early 80's with my younger brother in Mexico and me teaching diving at Tunnels on Kauai.

____________________________________________________


Camped for 5 days at 10,000 feet on Rainier, in the winter, to train for Denali.

Climbed Mount McKinley (Denali) in Alaska in 2004, then again in 2006 leading an expedition.


 

  • 2000 - Formed LeadProducers to provide mortgage leads to mortgage bankers.

1999   -  The Federal Group,  Woodinville, WA  Business Development

  • Co-created a web-based system to sell/list property and acquire/manage new real estate and mortgage leads. 

1998   Gettuit.com  Kirkland, WA  Co-Founder and Director of Product Development

  • Conceived and produced a online directory of Mortgage, Real Estate and Financial service
    providers. Hired the programmers and managed the source code development/strategic relations of this online exchange.
  • Site was designed to facilitate instantaneous sharing of leads (referrals) among mortgage brokers and real estate agents. Messages and the actual leads would be sent to/from any device, such as office/home phone, e-mail, fax, pda or cell phone. Each member had ability to create/manage their own targeted lists.
  • Proprietary CRM functionality was embedded into their personally created websites. From the site, members could send messages, via the web, in their own voice to multiple devices and group lists that recipients opted into from the site of the member.
  • Members communications data stayed real-time correct. Recipients could change/delete devices and contact data via web. The future system would follow member via time and geographic position. System carried the viral message of the client company as a written or verbal tagline like Hotmail tags a signature line to rapidly promote the creation of another user.
  • Designed and maintained the company’s first website
  • Established the first email servers and co-created dozens of product names and their related URL’s
  • Discovered the channel and gave the first presentation to procure the lead billionaire investor who funded a portion of the 6.5 million company raised with 2.5 million dollars and got the ball rolling.
  • Interviewed several potential CTO’s, found/hired the first salespeople, first IT people, many more.
  • Participated in the initial product positioning, pricing and branding, as well as the first executable demo with Hornall-Anderson.  Gettuit would have offered almost any online app or service as an online rentable application, sparking the Microsoft.net strategy.
  • Discovered and catalogued the first 250 application service providers, which became the core
    products presented in the company’s offering of integrated online service partners
  • Launched the company’s first commercial product, a desktop client application, which linked to three online service providers to integrate the process of finding a Realtor, a property and a loan officer.

1997    NetroMedia Honolulu, Hawaii   Owner

  • Founded company that built and hosted websites for Honolulu mortgage companies

1997  World Wide Desk, Inc Kirkland, WA   Owner

  • Co-founded Internet company to offer online small business web services. Met with the top
    executives of Costco to discuss the provisioning of business websites to their Executive Club Member base of several dozen million members.

    Spent almost a year analyzing the needs of small business people and how they could benefit
    from the Internet.  Primarily focused on people in mortgage lending and real estate.

1996    FIRST Technologies, Inc. Kaneohe, Hawaii   Owner

  • Co-founded company that was formed to host sales organizations whose members were able to create web pages and communicate through branded email accounts linked to the corporate master site.
     
  • More than 4,000 salespeople created their own unique sites and email accounts. FIRST Technologies wrote the code and private branded the package for use by large sales teams.
     
  • This proprietary software was demonstrated to an enthusiastic Steve Ballmer and may have inspired certain MicroSoft products you use today.
     
  • This technology, created, over five years ago, had the same core features as AOL, GeoCities, theglobe.com and other early virtual communities. The evolution of this technology became: Facebook.
     
  • These sites were extremely advanced at the time -- they were web-based Intranets that could duplicate themselves. Members sent/received internal/external branded e-mail; used private imbedded chat rooms and message boards; and could track new members in real time.

    These interactions, tracking and control were based entirely within networks that we created and hosted.

_____________________
 

A very famous naval aviator: Capt. Bill Span raised me with an awesome mom Irene.  Dad went supersonic in a Russian MIG-29 and attracted major media attention.

Attended the University of North Carolina on a football scholarship. Graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1978.  Became a Dive Instructor and U.S. Coast Guard certified Sea Captain. Sailed 30,000 miles throughout the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean and dove over 200 times deeper than 200 feet.

1978 - 1980 - Sailed out of Newport Beach. Taught SCUBA and captained boats. Sailed Baja, and southern Mexico with Maui charter guru Bruce Morse & the legendary schooner skipper Roy Wildman. Recently some very old Super 8 film footage has surfaced from this voyage that can be viewed here.

1980 - Captained 36' cutter to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and back during a year long adventure.

1981 - Captained 80' to 120' aluminum crew boats to oil rigs off Louisiana, also stood by in case the wells would blow up like it recently did at the DeepWater Horizon disaster.

1982 - 1983 - Captained a 55' trimarran, SURVIVAL  from Portobello, Panama to Cozumel, Mexico for Clive Kelly.

Tall Tales are told by Clive and I about those days here. Taught scuba diving on this very interesting island while exploring Mayan ruins, diving for black coral and salvaging Spanish shipwrecks. Enjoyed the modern and ancient Mayan culture and became friends with the native Mayan Indians and colorful characters of Cozumel and Quintana Roo.

Stories are told here about our sailing adventure and other tales of the legendary Capt. Clive Kelly who inspired James Cameron to produce the movie "Waterworld" after they spent time in the Caribbean.

1984 - Captained the world’s fastest sailing vessel, the SeaSmoke out of Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii.

1985 - Bought a 46’ catamaran and sailed to Kauai to teach diving and explore the North Shore of Kauai for the newly formed  Napali Coast Dive Expeditions.  Ran dives at Tunnels Beach for Captain Zodiac.

1985 - Captained the 75' schooner,  Amazing Grace from Samoa to the Kingdom of Tonga and back. Spent a month in the remote islands of the Ha'apai and Vavau groups. See the captain, the crew and the beautiful islands of Tonga here.

l986 - Joined Princeville Realty Corp. Princeville, Kauai, Hawaii, sold over $6 million dollars of property on Kauai. Designed and built 3 custom homes in Kilauea, Kauai. After obtaining my Hawaii Real Estate Brokers license, became the Kauai affiliate of Hawaii Real Estate Brokers, a division of Jon Douglas Associates of Beverly Hills, CA.

l990 - l992 - Formed Polynesian Divers on Kauai.

Trained Demi Moore, Woody Harrelson, Steve Guttenberg and at least 10,000 others to SCUBA
during career. Spent three days diving with Bruce Willis and family. Took him 140 feet deep
at the forbidden Island of Niihau.

1992 to 1995 -  Was one of the first people in America to market a prepaid phonecard.
Started at beginning with company that invented the industry: AmeriVox.

Sold over 20 million dollars of phone cards through my 8,000 member sales team. Acquired and handled several celebrity royalty accounts. My biggest client, sumo wrestler Konishiki was 625 lbs.

1996 - Formed first pure Internet company, FIRST Technologies, Inc. Partnered with software developer to create the first interactive, self generating websites targeted at members of large sales teams. This technology enabled any sales group to become a virtual community. 

The software was demonstrated to the current top executive of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, in early 1996. It was very favorably received and inspired certain products you see today.

I was living in Tantalus  Oahu, Hawaii at an elevation of 2,000 feet in a tropical rainforest until
the internet boom of 1997 brought me to Kirkland, Washington - near Seattle.

Send an email: info@BrandOceanic.com

phone  425.827.2431 

This movie we created below -  in the MOTION GRAPHIC style - conveys business info in the fastest way possible:

 



The BRANDO GIRL CONCEPT above.  My little brother and I sail to BRANDO ISLAND.

 

Promoting the use of something I call: Brando Talent

 

Developed a Video and Marketing Concept for Vacationers in tropical environments.

 

Produced this Sailing Voyage Concept to dive and play on Marlon Brando's Private Island in Tahiti

 

 

Wrote Script. Produced Video. Developed the Concept. Created the Offer and Deliverable.

 


Bill Span

phone  425.827.2431 

email: bill_span@yahoo.com



My early entry into marketing on the web began with the launch of the browser 23 years ago and has never stopped except
for one week in April 2015 where I threw a Player's Reunion Party to Honor the Legends of North Carolina Football and Wrestling.
 

If you would like to be invited to our next party which is scheduled for June 13, 2015 -  go to this page and fill out the form.

 

nt size="2" face="Arial">bill_span@yahoo.com