1st Person Founder’s Bio

1. 1966–68 – The first Junior Achieve­ment (JA) com­pany to do adver­tis­ing at Boul­der High School, Boul­der, CO. In Mr. Park’s sopho­more year, his JA Com­pany man­u­fac­tured and sold the ubiq­ui­tous mag­netic note boards that stick on refrig­er­a­tors. In his junior year, they pro­duced an emer­gency tire “Un-Flat­tener” — basi­cally a high-pres­sure air hose with female tire valves on each end that con­nected a flat tire to a fully inflated one, result­ing in two half-flat tires instead of one fully flat tire. In the­ory, this would enable dri­ving a very short dis­tance to get repairs. Obvi­ously it would­n’t work on any­thing other than a very slow leak and there was always a risk that you could end up with two flat tires. It was two years of arts and crafts.

Finally, in his senior year, Mr. Park led his JA Com­pany to become the first to do adver­tis­ing as interns at the local radio sta­tion (KBOL) on week­ends to cre­ate and sell adver­tis­ing to local busi­nesses while also cre­at­ing and pro­duc­ing the on-air pro­gram­ming all of which gen­er­ated so much rev­enue that rules were later passed ban­ning future JAs from repli­cat­ing the adver­tis­ing program. 

Lit­tle did he know at the time, Mr. Park’s life-long jour­ney into the world of mar­ket­ing had begun.

2. 1972 – First to cre­ate a Sony Walk­man-like device to play music cas­settes while ski­ing. In 1972, he gave his pro­to­type of the device to his father, Dr. Joseph D. Park, a renowned CFC con­sul­tant for Daikin Indus­tries of Japan (the world’s largest man­u­fac­turer of heat­ing, cool­ing and refrig­er­ant prod­ucts) to take to Japan and deter­mine what, if any inter­est there might be.

His father gave the Walk­man-like device (along with a walkie-talkie head­set device that Mr. Park also cre­ated) to some Japan­ese engi­neers that he knew and the rest is his­tory — the first Sony Walk­man intro­duced in July, 1979 was vir­tu­ally iden­ti­cal to Mr. Park’s device, includ­ing the micro­phone — an unavoid­able holdover on the portable voice recorders Mr. Park can­ni­bal­ized to make his device but cer­tainly unex­pected on newly man­u­fac­tured stereo cas­sette player. Although Mr. Park does­n’t know exactly how Sony acquired the device, there is a “Work­ing Girl movie” expla­na­tion of the design form fac­tor, the case and the con­struc­tion of the head­phones that is sim­ply more believ­able than the var­i­ous, con­flict­ing “offi­cial Sony” expla­na­tions of the cre­ation of the Walk­man offered over the years. (See the many sto­ries: here.)

Rec­og­niz­ing the Japan­ese cul­ture’s rev­er­ence for its his­tory, cul­ture and atten­tion to details, it is incon­ceiv­able that the specifics of some­thing as mon­u­men­tally impor­tant (and recent) as the devel­op­ment of the Walk­man would not have been metic­u­lously pre­served for pos­ter­ity — and yet it wasn’t.

The stated impe­tus for invent­ing the Walk­man (quoted from mul­ti­ple Sony big­wigs) was they wanted a way to “lis­ten to opera on long flights.” Then why put a dic­ta­tion micro­phone on a stereo cas­sette player, for use in an air­plane, and why sponge head­phones instead of closed head­phones, for opera?

The form fac­tor is a major issue — why a cas­sette that “flopped in-and-out” when there were already slide-in cas­sette car­ri­ers in wide use at the time that would have been more sta­ble (as used in Astral­tune and Stere­o­belt). This is also true of the inven­tor Andreas Pavel — who is cred­ited with invent­ing the portable stereo cas­sette player when in 1978 he patented the Stere­o­belt, which looked noth­ing like the Walk­man but nonethe­less even­tu­ally won a set­tle­ment from Sony in 2003.

Mr. Park’s “Work­ing Girl” expla­na­tion for the sponge head­phones was that the ski patrol at the Ara­pa­hoe Basin ski area where he first used the device, would not allow him to wear closed head­phones while ski­ing, for safety rea­sons. He had to be able to hear approach­ing skier’s warn­ings “on your left,” etc. His solu­tion: Sponge head­phones that allowed ambi­ent sound in. The cas­sette player form fac­tor (w/ micro­phone) was dic­tated by what was then cur­rently avail­able in stores — exist­ing portable cas­sette voice recorders that he can­ni­bal­ized in very spe­cific ways to play stereo music cassettes.

The orig­i­nal devices may still exist some­where deep inside of Sony and Mr. Park has spe­cific design details that no one else could pos­si­bly know about the orig­i­nal Walk­man-pro­to­type device and the addi­tional “walkie-talkie” pro­to­type that accom­pa­nied it. (Sony pro­duced the walkie-talkies in their My First Sony line of chil­dren’s elec­tron­ics — see below.)

My First Sony — Walkie Talkies       (1987) ICB-1000 ($50) 

Whether or not the orig­i­nal devices are in Sony’s pos­ses­sion does not change the fact that in 1972, Mr. Park cre­ated, used, and sold a bat­tery pow­ered cas­sette player iden­ti­cal to the Sony Walk­man, to lis­ten to music through sponge head­phones while skiing.

3. 1974 – Mr. Park was able to obtain the first hard liquor license for a world-famous night­club in Boul­der, Col­orado named by review­ing the liquor licens­ing statutes and dis­cov­er­ing, that while the night­club had been serv­ing 3.2 (low alco­hol) beer for more than 20 years, it actu­ally qual­i­fied for a hard liquor license.

Pre­vi­ous own­ers of the estab­lish­ment mis­in­ter­preted the liquor laws stat­ing that hard liquor estab­lish­ments “needed to be more than 500 feet from the state run uni­ver­sity” — by assum­ing that the mea­sure­ment was a straight line “as the crow flies,” when the statutes actu­ally stated “via pedes­trian access.” This was a BIG dif­fer­ence, since “via pedes­trian access” meant paved side­walks, legal cross­walks (no jay­walk­ing in the mid­dle of the block), and no alleys or other “short­cuts.”

500 feet mea­sured “as the crow flies,” placed the prop­erty unques­tion­ably too close to the uni­ver­sity to qual­ify for a hard liquor license. How­ever when mea­sured “via pedes­trian access”, since the prop­erty was located in the mid­dle of the fur­thest block “on the Hill” busi­ness area across from the uni­ver­sity, it was just far enough to qual­ify for a liquor license — which also meant that all other adja­cent busi­nesses were within the 500 foot limit and there­fore could not obtain com­pet­ing liquor licenses.

The sto­ried night club was a “show­case venue” that fea­tured record­ing artists: The Eagles, The Doo­bie Broth­ers, Linda Ron­stadt, Bon­nie Raitt, Chick Corea, ZZ Top, Fly­ing Bur­rito Bros, Miles Davis, J.J. Cale, John Lee Hooker, Jim Croce, Leo Kot­tke, Aver­age White Band, Brian Auger Obliv­ion Express, Earl Scruggs Review, Paul But­ter­field, Chuck Man­gione, Lit­tle Feat, Eric Bur­den, Her­bie Han­cock, Bob Seger, Harry Chapin, Gino Vanelli, Doc Wat­son, Fire­fall, Tom Waits, Tommy Bolin, Zephyr, Flash Cadil­lac & Con­ti­nen­tal Kids, Tower of Power and The Astro­nauts, among others.

4. 1977 – Exec­u­tive VP, Per­sonal Admin­is­tra­tive Assis­tant and ranch man­ager to John M. King, (1927–2016), of Den­ver, CO., an inde­pen­dent oil­man, financier and past adviser to four U.S. Pres­i­dents, to develop oil and gas prop­er­ties, ski area devel­op­ments and recre­ational land acquisition.

5. 1981 – Mr. Park served as Prin­ci­pal and Branch Manager(NASD Series 7, 63, & 24 licenses), open­ing the first “penny stock/IPO” bro­ker­age firm in Hon­olulu, Hawaii – OTC Hawaii, a divi­sion of J. Daniel Bell & Com­pany of Den­ver, Col­orado — a new-issues firm pro­vid­ing invest­ment bank­ing, ven­ture cap­i­tal, merger and acqui­si­tion ser­vices to tech­nol­ogy, min­ing and petro­leum star­tups. The Den­ver, Col­orado High Tech/Oil and Gas, penny stock mar­ket was a pre­cur­sor to the high-tech entre­pre­neur­ial NASDAQ mar­ket­place to come. 

6. 1982 – Asso­ci­ated Solar, Hon­olulu, HI – Mr. Park cre­ated the first “inde­pen­dent third-party, higher author­ity per­cep­tion” strat­egy to mar­ket pas­sive solar (hot water) to home­own­ers who were extremely hos­tile to the door-to-door solar sales peo­ple that had been can­vas­ing, re-can­vas­ing, and re-re-can­vas­ing every neigh­bor­hood in Hon­olulu since 1978, when fed­eral income tax cred­its effec­tively paid for nearly half of every solar sys­tem installed by a homeowner.

Mr. Park cre­ated a process to give con­sumers what they wanted instead of what they did­n’t want — by trans­form­ing the per­cep­tion of a “ran­dom, inter­rup­tion-based com­mu­ni­ca­tion by a door-to-door sales­man” into an “inten­tional, point-of-need com­mu­ni­ca­tion and engage­ment” that the home­owner would find valu­able. The for­mula included a uni­form of:

• White plas­tic hard hat
• Lam­i­nated pic­ture ID
• White short-sleeved dress shirt with a pocket
• Pocket pro­tec­tor with mul­ti­ple pens
• Dark-blue slacks
• Metal clip­board with questionnaire/survey and spe­cific word tracks to be read to home­owner — “Hello, we’re in this area sur­vey­ing Hawai­ian Elec­tric Com­pany cus­tomers to find out what prob­lems you may have had dur­ing the past hur­ri­cane — as far as any out­ages or other prob­lems.” (Note: Every­one on the island of Oahu is a Hawai­ian Elec­tric Com­pany cus­tomer. And there are only a very few customers(less than .1%) on Oahu who have gas water heaters.)

The “sur­vey taker” would ask home­own­ers whether they expe­ri­enced any out­age, dam­age or other issues dur­ing Hur­ri­cane Iwa which had occurred a few weeks ear­lier. When home­own­ers saw the “sur­vey tak­ers” walk­ing from house to house, some actu­ally pre­pared refresh­ments for them and if home­own­ers were skipped, some would pur­sue the sur­vey taker and ask, “hey, aren’t you going to sur­vey my family?”

The “sur­vey tak­ers” would ask every­one a stan­dard set of ques­tions: “How many peo­ple in your house­hold? How long was your power off? Did it go back on and stay on or did it go off again? Did you have any food spoilage? Did you have to reset your cir­cuit break­ers? Did you have any dam­age? What is your nor­mal monthly elec­tric bill?”

For every house­hold that had 4 or more fam­ily mem­bers and an elec­tric bill above $250/month — they would also be asked the fol­low­ing ques­tion, “If your elec­tric bill could be reduced by up to 50% would you want that done?” And after the home­owner answered, “of course,” they were told that some­one would come out to explain the details when­ever it was con­ve­nient for them. Most home­own­ers said to send some­one ASAP. Close/Install rate was over 80%.

The process elim­i­nated 2 major prob­lems for the “stake­hold­ers” (the home­own­ers and solar door-to-door sales­per­sons) — sales­per­sons did not suf­fer the usual rejec­tion rate and home­own­ers learned that they could have more money to spend on their fam­ily every month, pay less to Hawai­ian Elec­tric Com­pany and add sub­stan­tial value to their homes.

For every fam­ily of four or more with a monthly elec­tric bill exceed­ing $250/month — installing pas­sive solar to gen­er­ate hot water would absolutely save more money than the solar sys­tem cost. (Includ­ing one-time fed­eral tax credit that paid 40% of the ini­tial cost.) And while there were a few sit­u­a­tions where the home­own­ers expressed skep­ti­cism when the “sur­vey taker” returned to the cus­tomer’s home — one Chi­nese gen­tle­man pro­duced a large meat cleaver and said — “If this turns out to be a scam, I’m going to chop your hand off!”, once they saw their first mon­th’s sav­ings were MORE than the cost of the solar sys­tem (ie., after pay­ing for the solar sys­tem, they still had extra money in their pock­ets that would have gone to Hawai­ian Elec­tric Com­pany), home­own­ers were more than sat­is­fied — and no hands were ever chopped off. All of this because of a sim­ple change in perception.

7. 1982 – Yokono-Shin­taku Inc – solar divi­sion. Mr. Park cre­ated a sim­ple “give ’em what they want” mar­ket­ing strat­egy to cre­ate an “un-mar­ket­ing” per­cep­tion at the annual Oahu Home Show, where instead of the usual music, flash­ing lights, danc­ing girls and “yadda-yadda” pitch­men that every­one else was using to attract atten­tion – he offered a sim­ple dis­play with no music, no flash­ing lights, no danc­ing girls and no per­son­nel to try to “sell” con­sumers. Offer­ing instead — a “quiet zone.” 

A sim­ple dis­play with a sign stat­ing “Free Draw­ing for a solar sys­tem val­ued at $5,000.00.” Grand prize was Free solar sys­tem, 1st Prize was solar sys­tem for one dollar/month, 2nd Prize was solar sys­tem for two dollars/month and 3rd Prize was solar sys­tem for three dollars/month. The draw­ing entry drum was trans­par­ent plas­tic that was emp­tied con­tin­u­ously so the drum was always almost empty.

Plenty of tables, chairs, free water, pen­cils and entry forms for weary home show patrons to sit down, rest their aching feet and fill out a few entries. Entry forms required the num­ber of peo­ple in house­hold, elec­tric bill, name, address, phone num­ber in order to win – cor­rect infor­ma­tion that is almost impos­si­ble to obtain under any other cir­cum­stances. Thou­sands of entries were received.

All entries from fam­i­lies of 4 or more peo­ple with elec­tric bills of $250+/month in areas that had suf­fi­cient sun expo­sure — would be fol­lowed up and offered solar sys­tems that would put a net $100+/month in the home­own­er’s pocket — after the cost of the solar pan­els. Close/Install rate was over 85%.

8. 1983 – Dollar$worth Shop­ping Com­pan­ion – RR Don­nel­ley & Sons. Mr. Park devel­oped the first direct mail coupon mag­a­zine for agen­cies whose clients included Gen­eral Foods, Proc­tor & Gam­ble, Lever Bros., Bris­tol Mey­ers and oth­ers. Over­com­ing the tra­di­tional per­cep­tion and lack of credibility of “junk mail” by using an “inde­pen­dent third party” to pub­lish the coupons assem­bled into a mag­a­zine along with addi­tional “high-value” con­sumer infor­ma­tion such as recipes, clean­ing & cook­ing hints, how-to’s, sweep­stakes and games, etc., that was to be dis­trib­uted to every A, B, and C house­hold in Amer­ica — more than 20 mil­lion house­holds every week on “best food day.”

The mag­a­zine for­mat was slightly larger than a TV Guide so that house­wives would stack it directly under TV Guide when they were neat­en­ing up their cof­fee tables. The back cover of Dollar$worth resem­bled the brown paper in gro­cery bags, with a cal­en­dar and lots of space for notes. (If some­one writes on it — it won’t get dis­carded quickly.)

Coupons were located at the top and bot­tom of pages and were laser punched with address codes scanned from the mail­ing labels, imme­di­ately after the labels were applied on the assem­bly line. Mar­keters could deter­mine exactly which house­holds had pur­chased spe­cific prod­ucts with the coupons and pro­vide dif­fer­ent, related dis­counts to those house­holds in sub­se­quent issues.

100% con­sumer aligned — no edi­to­r­ial inde­pen­dent of the mar­keters, sim­ply a more effec­tive method than “junk-mail” or FSIs (“free stand­ing inserts” in Sun­day news­pa­pers). Pro­longed short­age of coated paper stock(required for the laser punched codes) pre­vented print­ing of mag­a­zine, how­ever expan­sion of direct divi­sions in adver­tis­ing agen­cies was a direct result of the infra­struc­ture cre­ated for the magazine.

9. 1986 – Con­sumer Auto Net­work — the first “quid pro quo” mar­ket­ing strat­egy where auto deal­ers paid to have truth­ful fac­tory invoice infor­ma­tion pro­vided to con­sumers. The deal­ers pro­vided their true fac­tory invoice cost to be deliv­ered at the “con­sumers point of need” by an “inde­pen­dent third-party” in exchange for being pro­moted to con­sumers as the “bet­ter” deal­ers that believed con­sumers were enti­tled to have true invoice infor­ma­tion in order to nego­ti­ate from “invoice up” instead of “sticker price down.” The major­ity of deal­ers at the time believed con­sumers had no right to know the invoice cost of vehi­cles, despite the fact that the “invoice cost” was lit­tle more than a book­keep­ing entry since deal­ers “floored” their cars (paid a monthly fee).  Yet this was a real and authen­tic “point of dif­fer­ence” for con­sumers in select­ing the dealer from whom they would ulti­mately pur­chase their vehicles.

It is impor­tant to note the stark dif­fer­ence in con­sumer per­cep­tion of sales­peo­ple pulling out fac­tory invoice infor­ma­tion in the deal­er­ship, and hav­ing an “inde­pen­dent third-party” pro­vide the iden­ti­cal infor­ma­tion. Con­sumers uni­ver­sally did NOT believe invoices pro­vided by deal­er­ship sales­peo­ple, while those very same con­sumers over­whelm­ingly believed the iden­ti­cal invoices pro­vided by Con­sumer Auto Net­work — the power of the “inde­pen­dent third-party” perception.

First to uti­lize Pacific Bel­l’s inter­ac­tive 976 sys­tem that enabled Cal­i­for­nia con­sumers to use touch-tone phones to obtain invoice cost infor­ma­tion on all cars, trucks, and SUVs “at their point of need” 24/7/365. First to use AT&T’s inter­ac­tive 900 sys­tem to offer the same ser­vice nation­wide. Con­sumer Auto Net­work’s orig­i­nal “invoice up vs. sticker price down” is the basis for all mod­ern auto pric­ing ser­vices today. Con­sumer Auto Net­work also pro­vided invoice pric­ing ser­vices to the orig­i­nal Auto Trader mag­a­zine’s — Auto­mo­tive Today.

One of the orig­i­nal par­tic­i­pat­ing deal­ers in Con­sumer Auto Net­work was Pete Ellis, who went on to found Auto-by-Tel in 1995. (“Auto-by-Tel was orig­i­nally a syl­labic abbre­vi­a­tion for Auto­mo­biles-by-Tele­phone but later became an abbre­vi­a­tion for Auto­mo­biles-by-Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion, in order to incor­po­rate the Inter­net into its name.” — Wikipedia.)

10. 1990 – The CAR Guide (The Consumer Auto Refer­ence Guide) — was the first invoice price VHS video tape includ­ing all mod­els of auto and trucks avail­able in the U.S., cre­ated 100% dig­i­tally in a Mac­in­tosh com­puter and dis­trib­uted by Baker & Tay­lor to schools, libraries and video rental stores. Pack­aged as a 4‑volume set, it was offered as a free rental in the pub­lic ser­vice sec­tions of video rental stores. VHS tapes were merely a “patch” as inter­ac­tive CDs would quickly replace ana­log VHS, only to be quickly sup­planted by the Internet.

11. 1995 – Cre­ated first online ency­clo­pe­dia — Auto­pe­dia — The Auto­mo­tive Ency­clo­pe­dia, that won awards and recog­ni­tion going back to the very begin­ning of the Inter­net as we know it today — and is ref­er­enced in over 100 books, includ­ing con­sumer hand­books, legal ref­er­ence books, auto­mo­tive buy­ers guides, col­lege text­books and it went main­stream enough to make it into Trans­form­ers comic books in 2012 (pg. #41, panel #3) and 2015 (pg.#17, panel #7). Auto­Pe­dia was the most rec­og­nized and quoted inde­pen­dent author­ity on auto­mo­tive “lemon laws.” Mil­lions of con­sumers world­wide depended upon the infor­ma­tion and advice pro­vided by Auto­Pe­dia. Auto­Pe­dia was always intended as a con­sumer resource as opposed to an “aca­d­e­mic” one, pro­vid­ing con­sumers with the infor­ma­tion they need to buy autos and auto­mo­tive-related prod­ucts and ser­vices. Auto­Pe­dia was designed as a “least sup­port case” demon­stra­tion of the power of the “pedia” brand itself, as all of Auto­Pe­dia was researched, designed, pho­tographed, and pro­grammed by a sin­gle per­son, Mr. Park.

12. 2000 – U.S. Patent Appli­ca­tion #09/740753, filed Decem­ber 18, 2000 — Describes the “Pedia Effect” as a “method and appa­ra­tus for inter­net mar­ket­ing and trans­ac­tional devel­op­ment.” It describes the the­ory, com­po­nents, and struc­ture of how “pedia” con­sumer infor­ma­tion brands are used to cre­ate a “group-dri­ven process result­ing in a self-defin­ing and self-orga­niz­ing infor­ma­tion sys­tem” — a pow­er­ful, global, thin-layer con­sumer infor­ma­tion inter­face between mar­keters and con­sumers that gen­er­ates the most authen­tic, organic, and pow­er­ful per­cep­tions of “inde­pen­dent third-party, higher author­ity” infor­ma­tion that con­sumers believe and remem­ber. Lit­tle did Mr. Park know that the “Pedia Effect” would be adapted by an aca­d­e­mic “Wikipedia” in 2001, that would become mas­sively pop­u­lar and author­i­ta­tive with­out any adver­tis­ing or mar­ket­ing and despite being con­structed by “a bunch of nobod­ies” for aca­d­e­mic, non-com­mer­cial purposes.

13. 2015 – Based on U.S. Patent Appli­ca­tion #09/740753, Mr. Park devel­oped a “Pedia Credibility Algo­rithm” that cre­ates a Point-Of-Need (PON) Mar­ket­ing plat­form unlike pre­vi­ous Point-of-Inter­rup­tion (POI) mar­ket­ing. It is the first mar­ket­ing plat­form that’s fully con­sumer aligned and focused on max­i­miz­ing “credibility” by enabling mar­keters to pro­vide con­sumers with EXACTLY the infor­ma­tion con­sumers want (truth­ful infor­ma­tion), EXACTLY when con­sumers want it (at their PON), from a per­ceived inde­pen­dent third-party con­sumers believe and remem­ber, across all mar­ket seg­ments. It’s the final evo­lu­tion of mar­ket­ing, where mar­ket­ing is the mes­sage and the media.

14. 2022–2023 — Dis­cov­ered “The 4 Basic Laws of Infor­ma­tion” which led to “The Mar­ket­ing Equa­tion” which which pro­vided a greater under­stand­ing of “The Pedia Credibility Algo­rithm” (above). Dis­cov­er­ing and assem­bling the var­i­ous com­po­nents to con­struct an algo­rithm is far dif­fer­ent than dis­cov­er­ing and under­stand­ing the under­ly­ing build­ing blocks that form the foun­da­tion for the algo­rithm. Specif­i­cally, “The Mar­ket­ing Equa­tion” is based on the 3rd Basic Law, that states the pri­mary com­po­nents that com­pose infor­ma­tion are “expo­sures” (what we see/hear/experience) and “credibility” (what we believe of what we see/hear/experience). “The Mar­ket­ing Equa­tion” sim­ply and clearly demon­strates the crit­i­cal impor­tance of “credibility” over “expo­sures” in over­all mar­ket­ing per­for­mance for all estab­lished com­pa­nies that have mil­lions to bil­lions of dol­lars in past ad expo­sures — for which the “Credibility Algo­rithm” is the opti­mum solution.

15. 2023 — The Final Evo­lu­tion of Mar­ket­ing is Point-of-Need (PON) Mar­ket­ing, where con­sumers and mar­keters both get what they want. The evo­lu­tion from “The 4 Basic Laws of Infor­ma­tion” to “The Mar­ket­ing Equa­tion” to “The Pedia Credibility Algo­rithm” to the “Pedia Plat­form” to the “Final Evo­lu­tion of Mar­ket­ing” is the solu­tion that mar­keters need to respond to the exis­ten­tial threat from AI-dri­ven per­sonal assis­tants (AI-PAs) that choose for con­sumers, dras­ti­cally reduc­ing (or elim­i­nat­ing) mar­keters’ influ­ence in the “choos­ing and buy­ing” process. Only the most pow­er­ful con­sumer-dri­ven PON mar­ket­ing plat­form can pro­vide mar­keters with a rel­e­vant “voice” in the process to respond to AI-dri­ven ini­tia­tives now and into the future.