Page 84 - Gary's Book - Final Copy 7.9.2017_Active

Teaching three courses at Webster University and two at Sterling College at a pay
of about $3,250 per course only paid for food and rent, so I had to find a real day
job. I applied for a licensed brokers position at Equitable Life Insurance Company
in April 1997 and was interviewed several times and hired in July 1997. I secured

my Missouri and Kansas licenses to sell life insurance, mutual funds and bonds. As
a registered representative of EQ Financial Consultants, Inc., and a member of the
National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), I began contacting prospects
via phone and mail. I kept my teaching jobs since this job was all commission-
based. You must have many family and friends as contacts, which I did not have.
This limited my possibility of really making some serious money. I exhausted my

list and energies within 18 months.

A student of mine at Webster University, Seth Waites, recruited me to join Black
& Veatch Corporation in a newly created division, BV Solutions Group (BVSG) as
a project manager/business consultant starting at $93,000 a year. This corporate
firm had developed several large software packages for billing and customer care
for major/large organizations (i.e. $750,000 to $5,000,000 packages) along with
annual service and upgrades. Consulting fees were $100 to $300 per hour. During

the first year, I sold approximately $12M in contracts and ongoing professional
services. I was promoted to vice-president of business development and received
an increase of $22,000; I was then making $115,000 per year, plus commission.

In the second year that I was there, BVSG received a surge of competition from
IBM, Xerox and other large companies with better software packages at
competitive pricing. Black & Veatch, our parent company with 9,000 engineers

building airports, telephone central offices, and major bridges globally, was only
interested in getting its corporate name on the project. They were not interested in
making a standard, normal business profit; they netted 1% to 2% per year. They
did not desire to throw any funding at a new series of products and were leveraged
to the point that additional investment was not even to be considered. The new

posture just continued to milk the current market and close operations gradually.
Once software is outdated, there are no buyers for the offerings. The collapse of
BVSG led to my being terminated on August 14, 2000.

My boss, Seth Waites, went to Bull Corporation in Raleigh, North Carolina. I went
to Sprint Corporation in Overland Park, Kansas, on September 25, 2000, as a client

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