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What experience do I have? Here is the short version.

After attending Ricks College and BYU, I worked for a couple local startup ad agencies. I was one of the few in Provo to break away from using a typesetter and use a Mac Plus for paste-ups. Also during my DJ days…I was one of the first to go all digital. You should have seen the club owners face when I walked in with just a laptop.

After a couple years of local agency work, I joined the newly formed NuSkin art department. NuSkin experienced explosive growth and I was able to do a little of everything…they even sent me overseas for some press checks. Overall, a great place to work.

While I was at NuSkin, they hired a fantastic creative director, Steven King. Not the scary one, but a seasoned designer that allowed creative freedom. He is the kind of boss that worked late when his team had to. So years later, when Steve got hired away to Franklin Day Planners (Covey)…he found a spot for me there as well.

Steve built an in-house agency at Franklin that was self-sustaining … basically he billed any department job as a paying client. I spent several years with Franklin doing various catalogs, etc. After Steve left, I returned to agency work over at Smith Harrison Direct.

At SHD, I learned direct marketing. It was a small office but they had big clients. Names like American Express, Icon Health & Fitness brands, and Easton Sports just to name a few. After a few years, they merged with a web house and were known as Studeo Interactive Direct.

I had already done some basic flash and html work for SHD, so I was excited to learn more from Studeo. This was before the days of “database” cms sites, or the control of CSS3 & JQuery. One of my first html sites created buzz being a site of the day somewhere, was featured in a SLC newspaper, added in a book about frames, and posted on coolhomepages.com. I was even offered a job by Microsoft thinking I was an industrial engineer all from this small portfolio site…but at the time I was a devout mac-head so I had little interest in Redmond. Times have changed…even had my custom built pc ranked on a top overclocker community 🙂

Studeo had phenomenal creative leadership and I stayed on for several more years. But after a while, I decided get out of my comfort zone and help my brother market his growing martial arts business back in New England. Besides marketing, I was to be the enrollment director and intro teacher. Initially, I did not know any martial arts or even how to teach…but it was a chance to reconnect with my family back east. Studeo wanted to keep me on and offered me a year of telecommuting. This allowed me to move back and help my brother grow his TaeKwon-do school to one of the largest in Vermont.

After a few years of literally getting kicked around at work … finally found a woman to marry me, kids, etc…it was time to move closer to my wife’s family in Arizona. I secured a contract job with OrthoRehab in Phoenix redesigning their inter & intranet sites.

About a year or so later, Steve offered me a retainer position for creating various Ken Garff Automotive marketing materials. Ken Garff is one of the largest auto dealers in Utah. I created ProtoPC.com and CMSiteHosting.com to host Steve’s and some other new client work.

During the evening I was a mild mannered designer through ProtoPC, and days I started a recreational gymnastics business called Funastics. Within the first year, Funastics started to move into the black. Funastics.com was top ranked on Google and the local word was getting out. Things were looking up.

However, the economy decided to change my plans…especially in Arizona. Many non-essential local small businesses shut their doors during this time. A few months later, I sold that Funastics location without any kids missing a class. Crazy to think I was doing back handsprings just a few years ago.

Later, I found other local contract work – one being with Pearson Education. They hired me for 30 days to fix a broken cms social site they had been developing for over a year, EdNebula.com. After fixing their site, Pearson requested I return after the holidays. During my 2 week break, I created a new beta site of what EdNebula could have been.

When I returned to Pearson, I showed them my beta proposal and they ended up extending my contract that same day and switched to my new site. I ended up building a few more specialty sites for them, but almost a year and a half later my department was re-org-ed and contractors are the first to get cut.

So I am re-branding to Top Web Works. How can I help you?