Bill Span  

phone 425 827 2431

email: info@SpokesGuide.com

________________________________________

1992 to 1995  -  Myself, and a handful of friends, started the American prepaid phone card industry and popularized the term "prepaid".
The product was AmeriVox.

Built a 8,000 member sales team while living in Hawaii, the team sold over 200 million dollars of phone cards.
Extensively used predictive dialers, broadcast fax and broadcast email to communicate with nationwide
sales team. Was one of the first people in the world to grow and communicate to a large sales
force using the very earliest broadcast email and affiliate websites.

Clients like 3M sold Post-It notes used our customized phone cards as incentives. Had exclusive
worldwide licensing agreements with Elvis Presley, JFK, Richard Petty, Wyland, the Three Stooges and other celebrities.

1996 – Founded FIRST Technologies, Inc. Partnered with software developer to create the first interactive, self generating
websites built for large sales teams. This technology enabled any sales team to become an online virtual community. 

The software was demonstrated to Steve Ballmer in early 1996.
It was very favorably received and may have inspired certain products you see today.

More history, starting with most recent activity:

2008 - Completed the matchmaking to fund and create the go-to-market strategy
of a company that is changing the way paint will be created and sold worldwide.

June 2007  – Founded SpokesGuide

January 2007 – Brought together and helped form the The Branding Foundry

2000 - Founded LeadProducers to provide refinance leads to mortgage brokers.

1996 - Co-Founded Eco-Ventures, LLC in Hawaii with Reinhold Ziegler, Jeff Dunan and Shan Gardner.
The company explored the alternative technologies of advanced air travel and construction of eco resorts.

1998 - 2000   Gettuit.net  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 company with 3.5 million dollars.
• Interviewed several potential CTO’s, CEO’s and all lead executives. Found/hired the first salespeople, first IT people,
  many more. Company had 56 people, was spending $656,000.00 per month at the heyday of the Internet Boom.
• 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, rivaling 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
• Conceived and 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 based companies

1997  World Wide Desk, Inc.      Profit Partner   Kirkland, WA  

• Co-founded World Wide Desk, Inc. to offer online small business web services. Met several times with the top executives of Costco
  to discuss the provisioning of business websites to their Executive Club Member base of 30 million members.
  
  Spent almost a year analyzing the needs of small business people and how they could benefit from the Internet.  

1996 - 1997   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 and webpages linked to the corporate master site.
   
• More than 4,000 salespeople created their own unique webpages and email accounts. FIRST Technologies wrote the code
  and private branded the software for online use by large sales teams mostly in the network marketing arena.
   
• Our software was demonstrated to an enthusiastic Steve Ballmer in early 1996 before MicroSoft even launched it's net presence.
   
• This technology, created, over fourteen years ago, had the same core features as GeoCities and other early virtual communities,
  but could replicate or add on members who created their own branded webpages, posted pics and basic user upload features that
  became the craze at 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 chatrooms 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.

 

Climbed Mount Rainier in 2003 with my father. Camped 5 days on Rainier in winter
to train for Denali. Climbed alone to the top of Mount Hood in June 2005
Climbed Mount McKinley (Denali) in Alaska in 2004, then again with wife in 2006.

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.

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

1981 - Captained 80 to 120 foot aluminum crew boats to oil rigs off Louisiana.

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

Taught scuba diving on this very interesting island while exploring ruins,
diving for black coral and finding 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.

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

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

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

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 10,000 other people how to SCUBA dive.
Spent three days diving with Bruce Willis and family. Took Willis 140 feet deep off the forbidden Island
of Niihau on the legendary underwater pinnacle known as "Vertical Awareness".

Bill Span: phone 425 827 2431

email: info@SpokesGuide.com