$10,000 I Didn’t Have

Between jobs, I was moonlighting as the local computer guy for small businesses. To look legit, I printed business cards, letterhead, and envelopes and gave the business a very official-sounding name: Systems Consultants.

One day at the weight-loss company, a programmer friend took one look at my business card and said,

“That name’s way too long. Just call it SYS-CON.”

I didn’t argue. It sounded right.

When I decided to publish PowerBuilder Developer’s Journal, I tweaked the name to SYS-CON Publications. Later — after I finally figured out how you actually register a company — it became SYS-CON Publications, Inc. And once conferences entered the picture, the name settled into what it would be from then on:

SYS-CON Media.

Back home, it was time to print the very first issue of PowerBuilder Developer’s Journal.

I had Aldus PageMaker on my Macintosh, which at the time felt like cheating. Real desktop publishing, sitting right there on my kitchen counter.

I decided to make the magazine thirty-six pages — twelve pages thicker than Paradox Developer’s Journal, which ran twenty-four pages in two colors. I picked cyan for the titles and accents.

No deep strategy. It just felt right.

* * *

Then came the printer hunt.

I made a lot of calls before finding a Hasidic Jewish printer in Brooklyn who said he could do 10,000 copies for $10,000. It was the best deal I could find.

And that’s when it hit me.

This wasn’t just an idea anymore. I was actually doing it.

My credit card — already maxed out — had $1,200 left for all expenses.

Where was I going to find ten thousand dollars?

I had a friend named Şima Uluç. Her father, Doğan Uluç, was the longtime New York bureau chief for Hürriyet and a well-known Turkish-American journalist.

One day in Manhattan, I met Şima for coffee and explained my problem — how I was supposed to pay for printing the magazine.

She didn’t hesitate.

“It’s easy,” she said. “You make a media 

kit and sell ads. That covers your printing costs.”

I nodded like I understood.

I had absolutely no idea what a media kit was.

I was too embarrassed to ask.

It took me about a month to figure it out.

Eventually, I think I called Advisor Publications and asked them to send me one of theirs. When it arrived in the mail, things finally started to make sense.

They published magazines like FoxPro Advisor, Database Advisor, and other language-specific journals popular with software developers. You could find them right on newsstands.

Unlike my Paradox Developer’s Journal, their magazines had ads.

Now I understood why.

* * *

I copied their media kit, tweaked it just enough so it wouldn’t look identical, and mailed it to every Powersoft partner I could find — maybe thirty to fifty companies across the country.

I told them the premier issue of PowerBuilder Developer’s Journal would debut at the Powersoft User Conference at the Dolphin at Disney World in Orlando.

This was their chance to reach the entire PowerBuilder community.

* * *

Meanwhile, I still had a full-time day job.

Between commuting and the office, I worked about ten hours a day — then stayed up most of the night building the magazine. I dropped mail at the Manhattan Main Post Office — open twenty-four hours, thankfully — and drove straight to work in South Jersey in my beat-up Honda Civic.

Somewhere along the way, I started wondering when this had become a perfectly reasonable plan.

Remember Carmen?

I tracked down her cubicle at the office and walked over.

“Carmen, I need to talk to you,” I said. “Don’t get excited. Not to get married. I need help. I’m starting a business.

Can we have lunch?”

She didn’t miss a beat.

“If you’re making fifty thousand dollars a year, I’ll go to lunch with you.”

I was heartbroken.

My salary was only thirty thousand.

* * *

MEDIA KIT MAILER MIRACLE

Within a week, the media kit mailer started producing what felt like miracles.

Out of the fifty large envelopes I’d dropped at the Manhattan Main Post Office, my phone began ringing two or three times a day.

These were real calls. From real companies. With real money.

PowerServe in Tampa, Florida jumped in immediately, booking the back cover for twelve issues at $3,000 per issue.

That same day, I sold the inside front cover spread to Greenbriar & Russell in Chicago — also $3,000per issue, also a twelve-issue commitment.

The inside back cover went for $2,000.

I couldn’t believe what was happening.

Over the following week, I sold ten more pages of ads for another $10,000.

At that point, I started telling people we were sold out.

Which created a new problem.

The magazine had to grow.

I increased the page count to forty-eight pages, with fifteen now dedicated to advertising.

Before laying out a single page, I had already booked $18,000 in revenue.

Printing would cost $10,000.

That left $8,000 to cover everything else.

For the first time, this didn’t feel like a crazy idea anymore.

It felt real.

I went back to Carmen’s desk.

“Look at these contracts,” I said. “I just sold eighteen thousand dollars’ worth of ads — and I still have no idea what I’m doing.”

I told her I had three months to lay out and print the magazine. For a professional designer, it would have taken a week.

For me, it was going to be a three-month crash course in panic.

And there was a hard deadline.

I had to walk into the Powersoft User Conference at Disney World in June with the first issue in my hands.

“I need help with ad sales,” I said. “And possibly adult supervision.”

* * *

She came to my townhouse in Jersey City after work.

By then, my answering machine was packed with messages from all over the country. She listened for a few minutes, shook her head, and said:

“Fine. I’ll take two days off, drive to your house, and organize this mess.”

Those two days turned into a one-week leave of absence.

Every morning, she drove to my house to keep things under control — while I drove in the opposite direction to my day job.

We were both working full-time.

Just not on the same thing.

That was the moment I realized something important:

I wasn’t starting a magazine anymore.

I was starting a company — whether I was ready or not.