35 years ago we started our first business and instantly realized the "easy" part was designing, manufacturing and shipping our products. The hard part (that every business faces) was finding customers. Based on our previous decade-plus experience in the stock brokerage industry we knew cold-calling "cold". We cold-called maniacally until we had enough customers to be able to pay for local advertising (newspapers, magazines, direct mail). Once we nailed our local advertising efforts (and with products that were shippable) we tackled national advertising in well-known magazines (Inc., Money, PC Magazine, Computerworld, ComputerShopper) and national newspapers (Wall Street Journal, Investor's Business Daily.) Every step along the way the goal was to nail the art and science of bringing in as many prospects as we could to the funnel so finally at the end of the process we had more and more and more customers. It became clear to us the business we were really in was lead-generation, marketing and advertising and the "in the trenches" lessons we were learning were applicable to every industry and niche. No matter which businesses we started and grew (with the goal to be the best we could in each of those endeavors) we applied what we called "the McDonald's philosophy" to the process, become the leaders by out-advertising the competition. The internet and internet advertising was the game-changer for our businesses where within 2 - 3 years of digital advertising becoming widely available (especially via Google PPC) we were spending $1MM+ annually to promote our businesses and those of our associates. All of this experience and the $10mm+ personal ad spend has brought us to the most important concept for winning, get the greatest number of leads as efficiently and economically as possible is the primary key to success. Beyond delivering leads? Pounding on the need to contact those leads IMMEDIATELY. All of that gave birth to ProxiSpeak.com.