I guess I have always been sorta different. That statement is not meant to be boastful or prideful, so please understand that is merely an observation as I re-live events and experiences of my life.

As I have been working on the newsletter, I have been asked about how the Las Vegas angle came about. I had never really planned it to happen, but as I wrote the process out that has resulted in the Las Vegas Business Newsletter, it dawned on me that my whole life is different.

I had visited Vegas for a few days at a time for about 7 or 8 years, and really enjoyed it. I was Director Of Engineering at a telecommunications company in Minneapolis, and the company I was working for at the time was bought out. We had a choice. Move to Rochester New York or lose our jobs. I had no desire to go to Rochester, and decided to "take my chances" on my own.

I really loved business and marketing, even though my entire career at the time had been technical. Somehow I was roped into attending a Tony Robbins "Mastery University" set of seminars that spanned a year, and there realized I had sort of an entrepreneurial drive (Michael Gerber calls it an entrepreneurial seizure). It that had been buried for years in my corporate "life". I then became a seminar junkie, and attended a number of seminars, as I knew I had to get my "entrepreneurial tool chest" fully equipped.

Side note...I had dropped out of school in the 10th grade, and married a really wonderful girl. I was 15 at the time, and she was 14. We have now been married 34 years, and have 8 girls and 2 boys.

Though I had done pretty well in the telecom field over 25 years or so, and rising to the Director level without an education of any kind, I knew there was a lot about life and business I had never been exposed to, at least from an educational standpoint.

I signed up for more training seminars from the likes of from Jay Abraham, Jim Rohn, Bill Myers, Ken Kerr, Dan Kennedy, some more Tony Robbins, threw in a little Robert Allen, and some Wade Cook stock market stuff and a few others...just to add to the recipe. I turned my car into a rolling university with all kinds of cassette tape series sets from the likes of Brian Tracy and others through Nightingale Conant, and began reading business books by the truckloads. I should have bought stock in Barnes and Noble.

While learning everything I could from these wonderful people, I opened a number of restaurants, did some telecom contracting, dabbled in several direct mail ventures, developed and sold telecom training seminars to sales folks, and a few other things for a few years.

Then, I ended up in Vegas with my family in 1998. I already posted the way that came about. I loved the city, and it seemed a natural for me.

So, with all the things I had learned during the previous years, I guess you could say that I saw the city from a somewhat different view than most visitors, and even most folks who lived there.

I also involved my family in everything (we have home schooled our children for the last 20 years), and took my boys (they are now 19 and 21 years of age) and son-in-laws to a number of the business seminars as my partners. The girls in general haven't ever really had the same drives for the business world. Anyway, we learned together, and business and marketing was, is, and probably will remain our focus.

My boys and I would walk the strip, go to all the new mega-casino openings, read everything we could about the concepts of business that the casinos applied, and on and on. We loved it.

Another side note...we even got to meet David Copperfield, Lance Burton, and of course Siegfried and Roy, and in general just enjoyed the city.

I was really amazed at the business successes in Las Vegas, as well as many of the failures. But I also observed that most business owners, and visitors in general, didn't really see the thought that went into the city. Steve Wynn is a master business builder, but most visitors really don't "get it". They think the whole gambling thing just "happens".

Anyway, since business in general was a constant focus around the house, I just developed a number of observations, and then transferred the concepts to other business types, whether in Las Vegas or not.

Then recently I began writing all the things I had observed over the years, and found I had a rather lengthy document. I emailed it to my boys, who are at the moment in Hawaii for a while on an "adventure", and they thought it was something others might like to read about, so the newsletter "was born".

So, I came up with the URL "clueless..." because that's the way I perceived most of the people in Las Vegas. I then built the web site, and am proceeding from there.

By the way, the clueless thing isn't a put-down, it's simply that they don't generally come away with ways for them to do some of the same things Las Vegas does "back home".

Will it work? Who knows. But I love the topic, and I am enjoying the experience of developing the whole newsletter thing.

I didn't mean to dominate this board, or to imply that I have it all together, so I hope no one takes offense at my posts. If my rambling is offensive, I apologize.

Nor do I even remotely think I am anywhere close to the folks I have had the privilege to listen to and learn from over the years.

I also don't have the illusion that the newsletter is mysteries that came from Moses on a couple of stone tablets either. The info is just observations that can hopefully be thought provoking, and helpful to others who are in the battle for business success every day, and to help them be different in their approach to serving their customers.

I have had my share of failures and blunders, and some of them have been pretty ugly. But since I never had the privilege to attend a real university for a real education, I consider it my tuition cost for my own private education.

Different...but hopefully not weird.

John Palma


http://www.cluelessinlasvegas.com