How I Created a Global Virtual Company And Changed My Life

By Ken Zwerdling on Aug 20, 2018

Before the Advent of Personal Technology

It all started long ago in 1984 after I graduated from the State University of New York. I came back to live at our family’s home in Oceanside, Long Island.  At the time, there were no personal computers and there was no internet. During my years in college, we had typing rooms where we would go with our reams of typing paper and correction fluid. When I returned home with my degree, I had to find a job the hard way by “Pounding the Pavement”.  I wanted to do what most people living in New York wanted to do: work on Wall Street.  I walked the streets of Manhattan for 3 months, into and out of buildings, checking the names on the directory, taking the elevator up to the high floors, handing out a copy of my resume and then moving to the next building, and on and on. This continued 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, for 3 straight months.  I didn’t have a college degree from a top school and I had a  C+ average. But I had tenacity. I was determined.  Between companies and employment agencies I went on about 99 interviews. No one would hire me. I once had an interview with a company on the 102^nd floor of the World Trade Center. I didn’t get the job, but boy what a view. I had experience from 10 jobs before graduating from college, but obviously that didn’t matter to the employers.

Getting Pressure to Settle

My family was telling me that I should settle and take a job anywhere, even at a gas station. I said no, and continued my quest.  Finally one day, I got a call from one of the many employment agencies working on my behalf. The recruiter said, “Listen, I have an interview lined up for you tomorrow with a firm on Wall Street at 9:00 am”.  I was excited, elated, thrilled. But I was also completely broke. I had to borrow gas money for my car and train fare into the city. The next morning I got up early, put on my best suit and made my trek into the city. I had to drive from the house to the Long Island Railroad and ride it into Penn Station where I hopped on the subway (the # 1) all the way down to the Wall Street station. I walked up the stairs on to the street and headed towards the building at 85 Broad Street. This walk took me right past the New York Stock Exchange. I was in awe. When I arrived for the interview I was quite a bit ahead of schedule.  You never know what can happen on the railroads and subway. When I was called in, I met with the supervisor, then with the manager, then with the Vice President. I told them that whatever they wanted me to do, I would do it. If they wanted me to clean the toilets, I would do it. Whatever it takes. I’ll do it. They said they would let me know.

After all the interviews, I headed back home on the subway, then the railroad and then driving home from the train station. This was the middle of winter and it was cold and there was snow on the ground.  On the way from the train station, my car, a 1976 Chrysler Cordoba, ran out of gas. You know the one, “with the rich Corinthian leather”. I had to get out and in my three-piece suit, push the car in the snow to the side of the road and walk home the remaining two miles.  I was cold and I was wet. Not two hours later the phone rang. It was my recruiter. He said, “You’ve Got The Job”. The company was Goldman Sachs. I underwent a background check, fingerprinting, drug tests and even a polygraph test. One week later, I started as a travel and entertainment accountant. 

A New Beginning

So I began my daily trek: car, train, subway, walk.  One hour and 45 minutes each way, every day. Those of us in the accounting department were expected to work about 10-11 hours per day. It was hard, but I was determined to make it work. We worked on WANG work stations (remember WANG?). I had several more positions in the city over the next 14 years, including accounting manager for construction projects with a national construction and architecture firm which lasted 5 years. For one of the years, I would travel back and forth to Georgetown just outside Washington, DC.  Every Monday morning I would hop on the Pan Am Shuttle (remember Pan Am?) and fly home on Wednesday night to then work in the New York office on Thursdays and Fridays.  My lodging was the company’s brownstone apartment on an expense account. It was a good gig.

I thought that at some point the company would permanently transfer me to Washington, but for the whole year, I just kept traveling back and forth. At this point I was really dying to get out of New York.  I was born in the Bronx and grew up on Long Island. I was ready for a change.  At age 10, I began working for my dad in his lighting store on Saturdays and in the summers for about 7 years. He paid me five dollars a day. I had planned on taking over the store, this was going to be my career. But when I was 17, my father passed away of a massive heart attack at the age of 49. He had no life insurance, no mortgage insurance, no savings, nothing. His business partners dissolved the business and my future was instantly changed. I had spent 30 years in New York: I needed a change.
 

Opportunity Was Knocking

One Friday afternoon while walking in Times Square I got a call from my boss in Houston, TX. He said, “I want you to stop what you are doing. There is an opening in our offices in Miami.  We will send you down, put you up in corporate housing for 3 months. You check them out, they check you out, and then we will see what happens”. Of course my first question was, “When do I have to be there?” He said, “Monday morning”.  I looked around at the chaos in Times Square and without missing a beat said “Yes”.

On Sunday night I flew down to Miami, rented a car, and proceeded to my hotel in Coral Gables.  Remember, this was before GPS. I found Coral Gables but I couldn’t find the hotel. It was dark and I couldn’t find any street signs. It didn’t make sense. I kept driving in circles and was really lost. It was about 11:00 pm and I was tired. I stopped at an intersection, got out of the car and said to myself, “Where are the street signs?” Well I finally figured it out. They were on stones on the ground. I had been looking up (isn’t that where most signs are?) and these were on the ground. I managed to find what I thought was my hotel. As I approached the entrance to what looked like a castle, I thought, “This couldn’t be my hotel”.  It really did look like a castle. I drove up to the entrance, got out and asked, “Excuse me, is this the Biltmore Hotel?” The valet confirmed that it was.  He asked me, “Are you staying here?” And I said, “Yes”. I gathered my bags and proceeded to go through the lobby marveling at this unbelievable place. Approaching the front desk, I looked through the window and saw a swimming pool. It was the largest pool I had ever seen. I asked the clerk if the pool was open, knowing it was Sunday night after 11:00 pm. He said that although it was closed I could still use it if I wanted. I went up to my room, unpacked, put on the most sumptuous terrycloth robe with the hotel monogram and went down to the pool. I didn’t know it at the time, but the Biltmore Hotel pool was one of the largest and most famous hotel swimming pools in the country. I started swimming around, floating on my back, all alone in the middle of this amazing pool and thought, “Boy, I could get used to this”. Well, I ended up staying in South Florida and my life completely changed for the better. I knew that leaving NY would be a major change and I was right.

Ready For Another Change

I was still working for the construction company and as time went on, technology progressed. At one point I had a huge portable Compaq computer. It was about the size of a small suitcase and had an orange-colored screen. Back in those early internet days our best connection was at 14.4 modem speed on a dialup connection. Part of my job involved running reports which I would do over night because it took hours and hours with such a slow connection. I could only hope and pray that, the line didn’t get dropped in the middle of the night. I spent a few more years at the construction firm when Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida.  We were without power or any kind of access for several weeks. And to make matters that much worse, it was August….in South Florida. Hot? Humid? No air conditioning! Miserable is an understatement. 

I was ready for a change again. I decided to branch out from the corporate world so I took a position with a small general contractor as the financial controller. This firm specialized in residential construction repairs to homes that had been damaged by the hurricane. There were thousands of homes that were extremely if not totally destroyed so I thought it would be a good position for a while. The extent of the company’s computer system was limited to individual PC’s, there was no such thing as a network yet for this level.  I had only been with the firm about 3 months when I realized it was not the most ethical firm. Apparently I was asking just a few too many questions when my bosses realized that I had figured out some of their questionable practices and I was let go. At the time I was devastated, but I soon realized it was the best thing that ever happened to me.
 

A Job That Gave Me Life Changing Skills

My next position was as a temporary associate financial analyst in the Corporate Planning Department at Ryder System, Inc. Talk about culture shock. Ryder was a huge company with over 25,000 employees and 5 different divisions (2500 people just in my building). I was responsible for preparing financial presentations for the Board of Directors and presentations for Wall Street security analysts. I would create large PowerPoint presentations linked to Excel models that showed financial results of the quarter. We had great computers, software, printers, and laptops to take home.  I really started learning Excel, Word and PowerPoint.  We were using Lotus Notes (remember Lotus Notes?) Just 3 months into my temporary assignment I was hired as a permanent employee. I was in heaven. I worked very hard and many long hours but I learned a lot. More than I could ever have dreamed of learning. But those presentations took a long time to prepare. Too much time. Also, way back when, there were no projectors that connected to computers. Each page of the presentation (which could be up to 100 pages) had to be made into 35mm slides that would sit in a carousel on top of a slide projector. This was timely and expensive. It also meant we couldn’t make changes to the slides within a few days of the presentation (even if something had changed) because there wouldn’t be enough time for the pages to be converted to slides and then checked for perfection. As I write this blog, I am creating a presentation on Prezi. The presentation resides in the cloud. It allows me to create our company marketing brochure in a web browser, send potential clients the link to watch a beautiful automated and animated presentation.  Plus I can make changes at anytime from anywhere, even from my smart phone. It’s a long way from 35mm slides!

Back in 1993, I would prepare these presentations about 6 times per year. To prepare for these extremely important meetings I was assigned keys to the Board of Directors room. It was vital that I had access late at night and early in the morning to set up everything for the Board of Directors’ meeting. This was a Fortune 500 company, I had keys to the board room and I felt important. During this time I decided to take advantage of Ryder’s financial incentive to go back to school and earn my MBA. I worked full time and went to school every other weekend for two and a half years. Working all day I would come home to study. And remember, this was before the massive internet and search engine development so we were still using brick and mortar libraries. It was grueling. But I did have help. Technology made me more organized. I was such a better student than when I was an undergraduate using typewriters. I was an expert at Microsoft products which made me much more efficient. And having spent a number of years working also gave me many advantages over students coming into the MBA program right from the undergraduate without having applied any of the practices or theories. Much of what was being taught, I was already doing.
 

The Politics and Bureaucracy of The Corporate World

After 4 years at Ryder and getting my MBA, I was starting to get ideas about life outside the corporate world. Politics and bureaucracy were everywhere. I was frustrated. And there was one specific day that would change my life forever. The company decided to outsource the Information Technology Department to Anderson Consulting and with that, a few hundred people were let go immediately. I wanted to be in charge of my future, responsible for my destiny. “I don’t want to be 50 years old and have someone come in to my office saying, ‘Hey Ken, today is your last day’. I was 38 years old at the time so I started planning my new role as an entrepreneur.

Thanks to my knowledge of computers, software, and business I decided to start a Management Consulting firm specializing in writing business plans for startups and expanding companies. Clients would come to me with a business idea and I would create an economic model to prove (or disprove) the viability of the business. Ryder taught me very well. Over the next 4 years, I created about 50 complex business plans in dozens of the most differing of industries. I learned different models to demonstrate revenue, technology, human resources, and sales. Not only was this new and more powerful technology available but I really learned how to use it. It became an extension of me. In an attempt to explain to people how I approach any new technology, I use the example of when someone buys a new smartphone. Most folks will skim the getting guide and maybe, just maybe, consult the 250 page user manual if something specific is needed. Me? I read the whole 250 pages of the user manual and then check out websites and comments. I might even send a message to the company with a question. I want to understand the operations intuitively not just mechanically.
 

The Beginning of Web 1.0

In the late 1990s, the dot.com/silicon valley industry was booming and then it wasn’t – Pop! Funding for startups basically dried up so the need for writing business plans came to a shrieking halt. At the time, my wife, an Italian translator was working for translation agencies around the world. She worked from home, half-time, quite comfortable in her pajamas, and earned the equivalent of most people’s full year salary. It was amazing to watch. I started looking into the business model of these translation companies and thought, “I can do it better”. So instead of demonstrating the viability of business for other entrepreneurs, I became my own client and created a business plan, proving to myself that this business was viable. At the time, internet technology was still web 1.0. All the same, the translation market was huge and fragmented.  This was really the launching pad to me grasping that by harnessing the power of understanding technology I could change the way I work and I could change my life. The business model I created was not industry specific, regionally specific, or culturally specific. Honestly? I could do business with anyone, anytime, anywhere in the world. I didn’t need to meet clients face to face. I didn’t have to only be open from 9:00 – 5:00. The whole world became our market. The hard part was getting my message in front of companies that I would never meet. I became a very good writer. I researched and then studied all the technology that I could get my hands on - from persuasive website design architecture, calls to action, search engine optimization and marketing, to Google PPC AdWords, persuasive copywriting, and email marketing.  Funny, I remember when I was a student as an undergraduate.  People were telling me to major in or take computer classes.  I never took one.  You remember, COBOL, FORTRAN, Pascal Basic.  Anyone remember those.  Good thing I didn’t study those

I remember a trip I took in the summer of 2001. A friend of mine had just sold his business and took off on a sailing trip with his family from Fort Lauderdale to Annapolis. They took the slow route, meandering for 3 months enjoying the journey. Shortly after arriving, the family returned by air and I joined him. Then the two of us sailed back to South Florida. The adventure took us down the entire Chesapeake Bay and then down the Intracoastal Waterway. This was the first time I had ever used remote connections to access email and the web. The technology had advanced to the point that I would plug my cell phone into my laptop and use the phone as a modem. Oh yeah, it was slow but it worked. And while enjoying unbelievable scenery from the open air deck of a sailboat, I could keep in touch with my clients and my family. From truly the middle of nowhere I was running a global business.

The Beginning of Web 2.0

During one period of time we were averaging over 400 visitors per day from 30 different countries. Our website included more than 850 pages and I managed all of it by myself. I couldn't

design the foundations of the website because I am not a programmer. But, once it was live, I studied the technology and managed 95% of it on my own. And adding to the balls I was juggling, our agency worked with over 3000 translators across 30 different countries. I had truly created a global company. I used local servers networked among the staff and we had remote capabilities allowing each per

son to log in from any remote location. This meant that whether at home with sick children, or traveling to see family, staff could stay involved. Every Friday I religiously performed a full back-up of the data using magnetic tapes and then manually carried them off site each week for safe keeping. Over the next 16 years I grew and finally sold the translation company. The technology that helped me start and grow the translation company was now working against me and the future of the translation industry.  It was time to move on to bigger and better things.

The Closing of One Door and Opening Another

A year before I sold the translation company, I started a bilingual/international staffing and recruiting firm placing multilingual candidates anywhere in the world. I had spent over 16 years intimately involved with global business, culture, communication, marketing, and technology and already had a tremendous technology infrastructure in place that allowed the company to reach out to people anywhere across the planet. And after so many years of tightening belts, finally the economy was turning around. Hiring started to pick up and again, the whole world became our market. With the further development of LinkedIn and Twitter, we could reach even more people around the globe. It was at this point that I decided to go completely virtual.  New advances in technology made my $20,000 worth of computer servers and backup equipment obsolete along with my $9,000 per month in rent. We no longer needed office space. This new technology from Microsoft is called Office 365. I studied all of the demos and tutorials to determine if it was a good fit for us.  The first step was to migrate our thousands of files to the cloud. Then I had to learn how to manipulate it not just as a user but especially as an administrator. After studying even more manuals and tutorials, I knew enough to be dangerous. My staff and I then became remote workers, logging into the cloud and could now really work from home – or anywhere. Office 365 allows users to download and use all of the latest Microsoft Office products like Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access, InfoPath, OneNote, Publisher and Lync. And each registered user is allotted 5 different devices – which can be desktop, laptop, tablet, smart phone, etc. It also allows users to sync all data files through a web browser from all devices and with all other employees (wherever they may be). And the cost? Imagine! Just $15.00 per user, per month. Everyone always has the most updated version of the files and software.
 

Getting Used to a New Way of Life

This new work environment took time to learn and really feel like we were in control. But once I got the hang of it, I started thinking differently about work. No longer was I limited to hiring local employees. They could be anywhere in the country or for that matter, anywhere in the world. And all of them would log in to the cloud from wherever they are. I have already started hiring college interns around the country each semester. They can perform the internship from the privacy of a dorm room, the library, the park or even Starbucks. I can also hire employees in any city, in any state, in any country. I can pick from the best national candidates and international candidates. When I have an employee in California (my next hire) the company could be open for business an additional 3 hours per day. If I hire an employee in France, we could be open another 6 hours per day. Now just consider having an employee in China and we could be open another 12 hours per day. Put it all together and our office has the opportunity to be open 24 hours a day. And for our own internal staff meetings, discussions, trainings – no need for travel and all its inherent expenses! We use Skype at no cost – with group video conference calls to come together for weekly staff meetings.

What Understanding Technology Can Really Do For You

Understanding the technology has changed not only where I work, but when and where I work as well. I can tap into the global talent pool for employees and never have to worry about backing up my data or worry about multiple versions of company files. My family and I can travel anywhere in the world for extended periods of time and I can run the business as if I was back home. And with ever increasing technology, a smart phone gives me the ability to be mobile and conduct business anytime from anywhere.  My network of connections is no longer local, it’s global and I have instant access to contact them from a 7” rectangle hanging on my belt. Just imagine an afternoon in the park, I am reading my news feeds on my smartphone and I come across a great piece of content that I feel my connections and followers might find interesting. In a matter of seconds I can push this content out to thousands of people around the world through LinkedIn and Twitter. This kind of power has “James Bond” written all over it.

Another great example is how technology has changed the way companies promote themselves. Just 5 years ago we had a telemarketer making cold calls to generate new business. He would make about 80 calls a day (fortunately today’s phones are pushbutton and not rotary dial). Even so, the majority of the time he couldn’t get anyone on the line and although he would leave voice mails most were never returned. If he was lucky, he would actually get to speak to 10 people a day, and maybe send out 1-2 marketing packages.  So just as a ballpark count, he was able to “market” to 5-10 per week or 20-40 in a month. With the development of LinkedIn, I can target specific people, segregating them according to 25 different filters.  Put a few paragraphs of marketing text together with links to our website and I’ve personally contacted 300 people in an hour. Doing the math we did above using the techniques of just 5 years ago, reaching 300 potential clients would have taken me 7 months.

What Does The Future Hold

I sometimes think back to the days of waiting in line for an empty typewriter in my college library with my typing paper to write my term papers, or walking the streets of Manhattan for months looking for a job. Now I have access to the whole world from my pocket. The thousands of hours I spent over the last 30 years understanding different technologies and software has brought me to this point. I am conducting global business from the comfort of my home, being with my family every day and my employees are able to do the same. Most people would not take 99 rejections to get to the one yes that lands the first job at one of the most prestigious investment banks in the world. Most people would not study books, newsletters, videos, software and dozens of business related magazines each month for years.  But then I’m not most people. And for sure, I couldn’t have achieved this next chapter of my life by just reading the Getting Started Guides.  I have truly changed my life because of the advancements in technology.  Hopefully my children will take advantage with Web 3.0 and life their life differently.

Foreign Expansion, Inc. is a leader in providing United States Staffing and Recruiting, International Staffing and Recruiting, and Payroll in Over 100 Countries.