Résumé

Business Background

Entrepreneurial passion is a driver in all the work I do. My record in being able to successfully increase gross revenues for clients has become a hallmark for my work. I am a business and marketing strategist. I accomplish my work through a combinations of experience, skill, talent, education, studying, and yes, a great sense of a “gut feel”.

In today’s highly calculated business world, there is little room for people advising their clients to invest in their company’s future from ideas you may have that are your gut feeling! I say: Shame on us for not doing so, or not being open-minded to listen to whom says this.

My focus has been on ROI (Return on Investment). I focus on creating outsized ROI for the shareholders (owners) and stakeholder (employees and customers of the business) for my clients. And my record proves this. I have a keen sense for identifying opportunities in the marketplace, weak spots in competitors and strengths in the people and other assets the companies have had.

Entrepreneurship has been ingrained in me from my youth.

My career experience encompasses brand management, new product launches, national advertising, event and trade show marketing, direct sales, project management; writing, and developing and executing business and marketing plans to ensure competitive market position and increase market share.

One attribute to this success is my broad experience. As I now work on a strategic plan or a new brand identify, I can draw from my broad business background. But if I were to identity one or two things I can pinpoint, they are: 1. I believe in praying for success in every project I do, and 2. I have well honed sales skills. These skills allow me to present a compelling campaign or brand identity for my clients.

School and Work:
I started in my family’s printing business in New York City.

My father was a traditional typesetter. In the late ‘60′s he worked for the New York Times and worked setting type in “hot metal”. He started a typography firm in 1970, soon after he acquired his largest customer, The House of Menus, a printer specializing in restaurant menus.

(During this time I lived in Bogotá, Colombia, my birthplace, while my parents were living in New York.)

My first steps in my career:
At the age of 15, living in Colombia, I was called back to the States. Soon after, I started what most would classify as a traditional apprenticeship program. I was put to work side by side with the company employees. Our seasoned employees tutored me on every aspect of their positions.

While I worked full time in our family business and attended school at night. I attended the School of Visual arts, then, two-year graphic design school. Later I attend NYU – Communications. I am short a few credits for an MBA, which I worked on at the University of Phoenix (San Diego campus).

1st. Family company, full service commercial printer
I learned and worked every aspect of the printing company, from sweeping floors to selling to printing and design. I was good in sales, but I loved to design.

I left my family’s business and started a fantastic journey working with small firms and Fortune 500 corporations, which led me full circle to starting my own design business in New York. But before getting too far, every job was another critical step in the building block of my abilities today.

2nd.  My second job was with a trade printer
The experience was essential in developing a keen interest in distribution channels, niche markets and attention to technical competitiveness.

3rd. Retail art supply store at the heart of 42nd Street in NYC
They hired to run their in-house “letter shop”, I expanded the product offering by establishing a silk screening department focused on increasing profits while reducing manufacturing to market time.

4th. Swatch book printing manufacturer.
The experience created an understanding of POP and direct sales support.

Why does this matter?
Print manufacturing is an intense industry. In fact, 3M came out with a study about ten years ago that surveyed 3,000 of purchasing agent customers. Their number one product/service they most disliked was procuring printing services! The reason was it has too many variables!

You think it’s gotten any better today? Nope!

In fact, it is more complicated now, because it’s not just about print any longer! It’s about communicating to your customer in a very competitive field! With the Internet, social media and mobile technology, it’s enough to make your head spin. The interesting thing for me is that all of my employment opportunities are all still relevant. Some have said: You won’t learn things Rafael will forget!

Sales and Marketing Experience
Preface: After working in the aforementioned positions, I wanted to expand my career into sales. In the next three positions,you will see how I developed an excellent background in direct sales, catering to the affluent on Wall Street and working high echelon of business, with a keen understanding of networking relationships, creating partnership while cross-selling, up selling and focus on ROI.

Marketing Support & Training – 1978-1980
About the company:
A/M International/MultiGraphics Division was a Fortune 500 firm. AM (Addressograph Multigraph) built small printing equipment, one and two color “duplicators”. These machines were used in small commercial printers and in-house printing departments of large companies.

What I did:
Servicing customers was the initial objective. My responsibilities included:  proper training of customer staff on how to run our equipment. The second was to assure there were zero hiccups with the installations.

Most of the guys I trained were minorities, mostly black and Hispanics. My experience running equipment that I learned to operate in my family’s business was vary useful. One the other side of the coin, since i had the experience of running our family business, I was able to also relate and help the department managers. And as things developed, the sales guys were taking me to sales calls to discuss the technical and financial benefits with mostly the CFO’s of these major corporate brands, such a Prudential, Chase, Colgate, Citicorp just to name a few.

Our branch went from 72nd place out of 75 to first in one year. The branch manger, John Bianco, headed the drive. His sales training, with his sales people had a lot to do to this success. The other component was installations. During my two years we did not loose one installation.

Plant Management – 1980-1982
About the company:
The Winchell Company, based in Philadelphia, hired me to open a sales and print production office in the financial district in New York City.

What I did
Managed construction of printing facility, appropriated budget, hired staff for the printing facility, oversaw all functions of plant management.
- Successfully met construction deadlines and came in under budget.
- Over saw all production between New York and Philadelphia; and between the New York office and the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington DC.
- While I managed the printing facility, I also built a book of business of $700,000 in revenue per year in my second year.

Again, this was while I was managing the production facility in New York (I was 24).

Business Development – 1981-1984
About the company:
Legal Systems, Inc – a division of Bowne & Company. (Legal System was folded into Bowne in the early 90′s.)

What I did
- Developed a marketing plan that grew the company by $1 million dollar in 12 months with my personal sales volume.
- Created partnership with the Bowne sales force to create an additional revenues of $800,000 of new business in second year with company.
- Expanded product offering by bringing in-house the index tab business, which generated $217,000 of additional profits.
- Due to my production management background, during a six-month period, I also oversaw the expansion of the LSI printing facility to handle a foil stamping and index tab manufacturing.
- I trained printing staff with new management and project management systems and successfully transferred management responsibilities to new production manager.

Major Account Sales – 1984-1987
About the company:
Pandick Technologies, Inc (PTI), formerly Unsloppy Copy Shop, was a division of Pandick Press, a financial printing company. PTI business was facilities management services, mostly managing in-house copy centers for major firms.

What I did
I was easily recruit because of my large volume of business in the Wall Street market. I brought in over $1.5 million of business that made me the second largest book of business in the company (PTI had 13 office in the U.S. and four abroad.)

Many of my local Wall Street accounts became national accounts with PTI. My sales volume created on average of 150 projects per day for the Wall Street branch (we had two branches in Manhattan).

Sharper Graphic Images – 1987-1988
About the company:
This was my first effort into owning my own business. The company had a short, but financially rewarding life. I started Sharper Graphic Images in October of 1987 and sold it in May of 1988.

In July I moved from New York City to Salt Lake City, UT.

Hiatus: 1988 through 1990
See personal history for details under What I Do tab here.

Prior to my hiatus, my background involved: production management, training, major account sales management, and business development.

The following experiences blend sales with strategic planning, branding, corporate communications, journalism, publishing, leadership development, event management and marketing and public relations.

Entrepreneurship, Strategic Planning and Brand Management
Preface:Having time to reflect on the future, I started with a very different focus in my industry since I now was married and had started a family.

Strategic Planning, Brand Management – 1993-2001
About the company:
Rubicon Direct Marketing, LLC
With Rubicon, I focused on developing an agency that catered to B2B clients that were in the services and light manufacturing developing strategic plans and designing branding programs.

What I did
I handled accounts such as:
- Mansell & Associates, a $1 billion plus realtor, the largest privately held firm in Utah.
- Wardley Better Homes and Gardens (Utah based), the largest Better Homes and Garden real estate franchises in the U.S.
- NS Group, one of the largest direct sales publishing firms in the world, with gross revenue of over $500 million.
During this time I also was involved with Nafta on a statewide level. I was recruited to be the Chairman of the Nafta Committee for the Utah Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. I organized a trade event working with the Utah Economic Development Agency, local business and civic leaders, culminating is bringing in Carlos Lara, a senior consultant for the government of Mexico with the Nafta Agreement.

Personality at Hispanic Radio Talk Show – 1994
To support Chamber initiative, I also started a weekly talk show, in Spanish, with a Utah-based Mexican radio station, La Poderosa, educating the general Hispanic population on opportunities of Nafta.

Publisher of the South Valley Voice, a monthly publication – 1999-2001
To support the markets for many of our growing B2C clientele, we launched a monthly consumer-based monthly publication targeting the affluent in the south end of the Salt Lake Valley.

The publication started as an 8-page 12,000-circulation publication and grew within a year to 24-pages and 20,000 and ended as a 32-page, 32,000 distribution controlled circulation. We had an award winning managing editor, Paul Swenson, and seven journalists.

As the publisher; I oversaw all editorial, creative, and production/financial aspects. I ran this side of the business as I managed the creative side of the business -Rubicon Direct Marketing.

South Valley Business Alliance, CEO – 1999-2001
The Business Alliance was a networking organization, similar to a chamber of commerce. Since we also owned the publication and had a talk show, we could reach to the general public and treat topics relating to many issues from land use to taxes, to school board budgets. We called it Knowledge-based Networking.

Through the South Valley Business Alliance, we organized events such as all-day fairs with 5K runs, food and entertainment, amusement rides, and “retailer” trade shows.

I also handled the “City Days” for Draper City, 5K for Herriman City, Cinco de Mayo Festivities for Riverton City and Winter Festival for the very affluent SunCrest Community in Draper, Utah.

I also organized a 54K triathlon: a 20 mile run, 14 miles horseback ride and 10 mile bike ride in Sanpete County, UT.

Personality at South Valley’s Business Hour on KTALK – 1999-2001
To further supports Rubicon and the Voice, I started a local weekly business talk show. Using our editorial research with the Voice, I was able to triangulate the three-prong strategy I developed for our business: the creative, publishing and networking businesses, while creating a cross-platform partnership with KTALK, as conservative talk station with political and civic local station.

Tools for the Capitalist, LLC – 2002-present
About the company:
Tools for the Capitalist is an ROI-centric brand management firm with a keen ability to create substantial ROI from marketing dollars.

The company develops brand initiatives utilizing SWOT as the basis for each client’s needs.