Chapter 1: Facing Your Fears I was a computer idiot, a technological illiterate, a complete rank amateur.
I wasn't merely inept when I sat down before the unblinking eye of a computer screen.
I was afraid.
And that fear grew into hatred.
I hated the computer culture, the cyberspeak, the bits and bytes, the jargon of a world obsessed with itself. Armies of computer nerds, the dudes with the thick black glasses and calculators on their belts, invaded my dreams and disrupted my sleep. Walking into a computer store was an invitation to a panic attack. And the mere thought of deciphering a computer software program kick-started my brain into instant scream mode.
This fear haunted my life, because computers were my livelihood, my career. As an advertising salesman for The Wall Street Journal, my territory was the high-tech industry. Based in Silicon Valley, California, ground zero of the personal computer revolution, my customer base consisted exclusively of high-technology accounts: Compaq, IBM, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, and many more.
And I had a secret, a deep, dark, nasty secret.
Here I was, a twenty-eight-year-old, $100,000-a-year ad salesman, sitting in strategy meetings with executives in the highest echelons of the computer industry, discussing multimillion-dollar marketing advertising campaigns...and everyone assumed I was a computer expert! Yes, I learned the lingo. Yes, I could speak with you in detail about the transistor count on the 386 processor. But it was all a sham. I was merely an actor reciting a part. Personally I had never even touched a computer keyboard. Hell, I couldn't even figure out how to work a VCR, much less a computer. But here I was in Silicon Valley in its heyday, nodding my head at meetings where everyone is speaking cyberspeak, ever-intense and exclaiming, "Yes! Excellent! I understand!"
If you think it's humiliating being at work where everyone knows how to use a computer except you, if you think it's humiliating being the digitally deficient father of computer-literate children, try being in the heart of Silicon Valley calling on the biggest names in the business, executives who live and breathe technology ten hours a day, when you've never even touched a keyboard!
Do you blame me for hating computers? Hating them with a passion? I was the quintessential sales guy. You know the type. "Computers? That's for the backroom boys. I'm too busy out doin' business!"
How did computers set me free? How did I go from computer illiterate to running my own $20 million computer television company within the short span of thirty-six months? How did I move from sharing a ratty apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with my business partner -- living hand-to-mouth, unable to support my wife, much less an empowering lifestyle -- to my present home, a 13,000-square-foot Dallas mansion? How did I conquer the fear of touching a keyboard and go on to mn every aspect of my life with one? How did I go from computer shame to appearing on my nationally syndicated television programs, which are essentially tools to show people how easy it is to plug in to the computer revolution?
When people ask me these questions, I point to the blinking computer screen that resides in 36 percent of America's households. I point to that screen and say, honestly and without one ounce of exaggeration, "The answer is in that box."
Like many people caught in the crossfire of the technological revolution, I was driven out of one job by computers, only to be delivered salvation in another. Disillusioned with my advertising career, I was soon asking myself the age-old question: "What am I supposed to do with my life?"
Then, one day, I just hit the brakes. I quit my job. I bade good-bye to Silicon Valley with a celebratory helicopter lunch over the region with one of my best customers. Then I grabbed a backpack and split for South America. For three months I hung out with my best buddy and did some real soul-searching.
When I returned to my adopted hometown of Houston, a stockbroker friend of mine sat down with me and said, "You know, Mark, it's absolutely absurd that you've made your living in the computer business for all these years and you don't even know how to turn one on: It's really a terrible waste. You gotta get on-line. Let me show you this new computer on-line service called Prodigy."
Prodigy was perfect. Here was this nice, fun, easy-to-use program, a simple way to communicate with the everyday, grass-roots computer world. It wasn't a word processor or a spreadsheet or something boring. It was a totally exciting, graphics-driven communications program.
When I say easy, I mean elementary school easy. Because I didn't even know how to type! I had to hunt and peck out the keys, one finger at a time. Still, before I knew it, the screen lit up with colorful graphics and I was on-line. I was chatting with other users around the world. I was accessing my local supermarket and walking down virtual shopping aisles, picking out the items I wanted, and the grocery store would actually deliver the groceries to my home. I was accessing the weather and playing games. It wasn't scary. It wasn't something only a programmer who spoke the foreign language of cyberspeak could do. It was something anyone could comprehend.
The author Graham Greene wrote that in every life there is a moment when a window opens and the future rushes in. This was my moment. Something extraordinary "clicked" within me. When I looked up from that screen, I felt absolute exhilaration. It was like jumping out of an airplane and realizing that the chute actually opens and you're going to be safe on the ground. I felt this incredible rush of relief.
"I can do this!" I practically shrieked.
It was the coolest experience of my life, a major turning point, a personal revolution -- so much of a revolution, in fact, that I quit my job search and threw myself into the computer full-time. I had taken my first step through the window, the first step of a journey from which I would never return.
I was hooked.
For weeks I raced back and forth to my stockbroker friend's office to spend the day playing with his computer. Finally I spent $2,000 on my own system, a no-name PC clone, and the computer consumed my life. I was unemployed. My wife was making $2,000 a month working as a special education teacher. But for the next eight or nine months I did nothing but sit, unbathed and unshaven in shorts and T-shirt, in a tiny loft of our cramped town house and jam on my computer all day long and deep into the night.
I was totally obsessed! My mission in life had been distilled into one simple statement: "I gotta learn this thing. I gotta crack the code!"
My computer proficiency multiplied with the time I invested. Soon I was loading software, taking the box apart and putting it back together again, teaching myself everything about my wondrous new window on the world.
Did it take a toll on my personal life? You bet it did! I went from being a rather gregarious social person who worked out five days a week to being an unshaven, pale-faced recluse comfortable only in the blue light of the computer screen.
I had become my worst nightmare. I had become a backroom computer nerd!
I was so consumed with the infinite possibilities at my fingertips -- the cutting edge of a dramatic revolution -- that I decided to make computers my life's work, my personal mission. I longed to help other people get started, just as my stockbroker friend had helped me.
"There's a business in this!" I was soon proclaiming.
Even my best friends thought I had lost my mind. My former associates at The Wall Street Journal urged me to visit a shrink -- quick! "You quit a $100,000-a-year job to disappear into a bedroom with a computer?" they'd exclaim. "