I thought this story was worth mentioning - The AP put out a story earlier today about Google buying the “garage” that Larry Page and Sergey Brin rented eight years ago in Menlo Park, CA.  In actuality - Google bought the entire house that is 1,900 square feet and includes a hot tub in the back yard that Larry and Sergey used to relax in between writing a search algorithm that led to a search-engine that has revolutionized the world.

Anyway - a link to the article on CNN is located HERE.  For those of us that are business owners it’s quite funny to think about the early days and what impact those stories have on telling the story of our success or failure.  For instance, I can still remember sitting in a Bertucci’s Restaurant outside of Philly in the summer of 1999 and jotting down a few ideas on a napkin that eventually became the original Grandma Jones’ Pepper Jam (GJPJ) label - GJPJ is an actual gourmet food product that my brother Rick and I began selling in 1999 - the product is sold all over the country and online at stores like Target.com, Overstock.com, Amazon.com, Epicurious.com, igourmet.com and many others - the product has also been featured on QVC.

That’s a story for another time - but the napkin story (I think I still have that damn napkin somewhere) is symbolic of the nostalgia I experience when I think about the early days of Pepperjam.  About 6-months after founding the gourmet food company I went off and founded the internet marketing company known in the industry as Pepperjam - those early days were hilarious - from working remotely during my grad school and law school days to making business presentations over the phone while I was at the beach (one of largest accounts I’ve ever managed came during one of those calls [client unnamed].)  I vividly remember my my grad school apartment (Radnor House Condos in Rosemont, PA).  I was at Villanova studying clinical psych when I first started Pepperjam.  I was absolutely amazed by the potential of the internet and I remember my roommate wondering if I was anti-social since I was locked in my room most of the time managing accounts and generating PPC ads for some affiliate stuff I was doing.  Writing this right now I can actually picture my roommate in the kitchen of our diggs cooking food, while I was in my room setting the stage to become one of the premier internet marketing agencies in the United States - I can actually smell the aroma of the food he’s cooking.  Yeah - it sounds crazy, but if Google can go ahead and reminisce by purchasing the “garage” that played a role in the creation of Google I guess I can reflect on that napkin and think about how crazy I must have seemed to others by being so darn driven to learn everything I could about the internet - hey, I guess things have actually worked out in my favor.

Do you have a story of how you got started in online marketing?  I’d love to hear your thoughts?

This entry was posted on Monday, October 2nd, 2006 at 5:54 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, search-engine marketing, affiliate marketing, internet marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.