2011, the grocery store warehouse Costco where I bought cases of bottled water for drinking in my car is selling stocks for $4 per share. Fourteen years ago, our web services were replacing stock brokers. Now the wholesale warehouse has business services for customers as they exit the front door. Internet investing, stocks for $4, mortgage refinancing, and virtual assistance that answer phones for business people on the go. The virtual assistant speaks for the company, faxes are replaced, and creates conference calls in virtual boardrooms. For an extra fee, you can gain access to a translator to do business while driving in another country. Buying stocks from a business is as easy as purchasing bottled water.
The success of the creative teams tutorial work with Charles Schwab and Adobe Systems opened up doors throughout Silicon Valley. Firms hiring techs from Tennessee, Florida, and China came to the Bay Area to recruit web experts. The titles were becoming comical. Companies based out of New York City had a field day with different titles: Chief Technical Officer, Chief Information Officer, Chief Internet Officer. San Francisco Creative Director became Chief Production Officer in Jacksonville, Florida. Bay Area Art Director was renamed Executive Producer. No one in California cared about the fancy titles on their business cards. California engineers wanted to create. These web programmers didn’t like board room discussions, meetings with sales people, and they hated marketers who needed a script written out before they could sell the software. Team work was frustrating for the most talented computer scientists. They enjoyed machinery, because the technology did not talk back or ask redundant questions. I managed well because I like people as much as the technology. So in many cases, I became a bridge. My job was to meet separately with executives and engineers.
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