My involvement with NetAudioAds over the past 4 months reminds me in some ways of my efforts in the 1980s to help build the old A.L. Williams company. Art Williams was known for his exciting, fun and inspirational speeches and coaching sessions. Art was an award winning high school football coach, turned financial services mogul. ALW was on a mission to help people financially through education and introduce a completely new way of doing business in an old industry. If you spoke with anybody associated with the insurance industry about ALW, you would have thought it was a company and concept spawned from the depths of Hell. Oh how they hated us as we took their customers away from them by the thousands.
Likewise, NetAudioAds is on a mission that may revolutionize an old industry with the introduction of a new advertising concept consisting of 5-second internet audio ad plays. In the process, NAA will help many network publishers become financially successful and many advertisers have a better business. Since the beginning efforts to start building the publishers network together last December, NetAudioAds and PayPerPlay has endured a barrage of negativity primarily engineered by a couple of less-than honorable folks with a hidden agenda. If one was to look only at some of what they say and does not take a closer look, the same "spawned from Hell" conclusion might be reached.
Art Williams refused to be deterred regardless of setbacks, attacks by business enemies, or complaints from naysayers, detractors and even disgruntled associates. He was determined to build long-term financial success for he and his family along with thousands of others who believed and worked to acheive common goals. He did make the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. He was listed in the Forbes 400 riches men in America list within a few short years and is, I believe, a billionaire today. You can judge whether his refusal to be deterred by negativity worked out or not.
I have personally spent a great deal of time being involved with the PayPerPlay publishers forum while the business has been preparing to come out of beta. During this waiting game, I observed a number of the same type of detractors and naysayers that we had back in the ALW days. For a variety of reasons, they didn't understand what they were involved with and often quit before they even got started. Some of them would then tell others that it was a scam or that they were ripped off because they didn't make enough money to even cover their licensing expeneses. I saw it happen over and over again. To succeed in ALW required real and continuing efforts. Sadly, most folks were not willing to pay a price to succeed.
But with NetAudioAds, there is no price to pay, zero cost to join and virtually no continuing efforts that must be maintained. It's simply a matter of placing a bit of code on their web sites. The amazing thing about some of these negative types in the PPP forum is that even though they are associates and claim they understand, they simply do not really know what they are involved with, and that's a shame. Just as the old ALW days, they make silly and uninformed remarks.
NetAudioAds does not have a person such as Art Williams, nor do they have the need of one because it is a wholly different type of business. Nevertheless, someone has to address things when people raise various issues. As the PPP forum members will attest, I certainly endeavored to help the common cause with frequent and sometimes long posts addressing a variety of issues and various remarks by sometimes disguntled associates and some whom simply had no clue what the business is trying to accomplish.
Partially as a product of that involvement and partially by private communications, I had ample opportunity to observe the remarks and actions of Larry Host, CTO of NetAudioAds. What I found in Larry was the same type of resolute determination that I witnessed in Art Williams. Art knew exactly where he was going. Likewise, Larry knows exactly what they are doing and believes in where they are going. He is fully determined to build something that will last and is not in the slightest degree, interested in some flash in the pan type operation. NetAudioAds is here to stay. Patience as the process plays out has been a hallmark of Larry's actions. That characteristic is a bit different than Art. Anyone who remembers those days, recalls (probably fondly) the many references to half-butts and losers :)
Art Williams later sold the sales agency and it became Primerica Financial Services, a part of the huge CitiGroup organization. To this day, PFS is still the target of it's business enemies with relentless attacks on internet forums by some very nasty folks (traditional life insurance agents) who masquerade as wanting to help folks. The truth is, they only want to help folks by relieving them of their money for overly expensive insurance products.
The early days of ALW was really exciting times for many of us and few who were involved then would deny that. Building a new business from scratch with such high ideals that defined the ALW organization of helping people with their financial affairs by saving them huge amounts of money. Hundreds of thousands of people joined that business with the hope of changing their whole lives. For tens of thousands, it in fact did.
A few hours ago, I stumbled across an ALW related site. I posted a message comment to Art there. It has to have a moderator approval process to happen before it actually posts. I decided to place the whole thing here and that is what lead to the article title of Everyone Needs a Coach.
Hi Art,
I just stumbled on everybodywantsacoach.com for the first time. I want to say hello and send a big thank you for the part you played in my life. Like others, I too consider my time with A.L. Williams /Primerica as one of the most exciting portions of my life. I had the pleasure of speaking directly with you and Angela a time or two in Las Vegas (though there is no reason why you would remember). I wrote a rather long, heart-felt letter to Angela once to which she sent back a personal reply which revealed that she had indeed read and was touched by what I had sent.
Greg Gentry and I shared an office in Parkersburg, WV and were a part of the Kip Ridley, Ronnie Barnes organization. I count it a pleasure to have been an RVP with the original team that won the 1st national championship. The 1984 celebration in New Orleans is a special memory that remains clear in my mind to this day. What was it, 40,000 of us at that meeting? I will never forget walking into the convention center with the Rockbusters Song blasting our senses.
After only 7 years from a standing start… knocking off Prudential’s butt as the largest seller of life insurance in the world that year was just too, too satisfying :) Come to think of it, so were old agent confrontations. I’m suddenly remembering how much I hated those guys.
I just can’t say enough about what all the “Just Do It” and other Art ism’s and principles have meant to me over the years. Sometimes when it seems that the stupidity of various political situations become just too much to contemplate, I will recall you talking about Margaret Thacher’s little war in the Falkland Islands and how it had no bearing on our day to day lives… just do it… ha!
I am no longer in the financial services business for no particular reason other than life just sometimes goes in unexpected directions. Like Sharmaine Hobbs said in a previous comment, there was a time that I went through a wilderness experience and felt like a failure after I was no longer active in the business. And, as with so many others who were involved with ALW, my relationship with God was something that was like a master control overlay program under which all of life’s activities were subjected. I gave Him complete permission to take my life in whatever direction it needed to go in order to develop me into who He wanted me to be. So I figure that wilderness experience was ordained from above.
Years ago, I had the good fortune of crossing paths with a man who in some ways reminds me of you. Kelley Varner is a well known leader in the church world and has had a major impact in the lives of God’s people around the world. He was talking one time about the trials that the people of God go through. His closing remarks were about how the most important thing one can say is that after all is said and done… I’m Still Here!!
Well, I AM STILL HERE. No weapon formed against me did or will prosper. Life is strange, is a huge understatement. Who would have thunk it… of all things, I found myself providing electronics service manuals for vintage audio equipment on the internet. An internet presence often leads to other things so I’ve recently been investigating and learning about some other internet marketing type things.
The most recent thing that has excited me is a new internet advertising model by NetAudioAds. It primarily consists of targeted 5-second audio ads that play to internet users worldwide. There are also plans to implement the world’s first Internet Emergency Broadcasting System. In many ways, I consider my involvement with NetAudioAds akin to my days with A.L. Williams… being a part of something larger than myself. I’m also about to start developing a blog site where I’ll be bloviating about many things… and probably some old ALW war stories and principles :)
I’ll close with this… I’m just another example of the old adage, “You can take the boy out of ALW, but you can never take the ALW out of the boy.”
Thanks a million Art!!
Rick Stout
Parkersburg, WV
StereoManuals.com
RickWords
NetAudioAds-PPP
