Standing on a naval ship off the coast of Nicaragua as a young sailor back in 1985, I never thought I would be the President of a marketing company (and several other companies) and the author of one of the best selling marketing books on the Internet.

But....here I am...and here's how it happened.

In 1989, after spending six years in the United States Navy as an electronics technician, I decided to become a missionary for my church and serve in the South American country of Bolivia.

It was the best two years of my life. I learned more about people and life in those two years than I did in my previous 24 years. Y tambien, aprendi el bella idioma de espanol!

After returning from Bolivia, I was 27 years old and I always had a dream of getting a college education. So I packed up my bags, jumped on my motorcycle and headed up to Utah to go to school.

Five years later I graduated with a master degree in Accounting from one of the top three accounting programs in the nation - - only to determine that accounting didn't excite me very much.

But I did enjoy technology so I entered the illustrious world of business consulting with a company called Arthur Andersen (yes, the company that went down in flames with the Enron scandal).

One of my assignments with Arthur Andersen was to help small companies who had been acquired by large companies meet their expected earnings requirements after their acquisition.

It was during this process that I learned that you can only cut costs so much from a small business. Most of the earnings improvement needed to come from the "top line" or revenue side of the income statement.

And that meant that I needed to learn marketing...and fast. So I dived in head first and devoured every marketing book I could find.

The world of marketing fascinated me. I began to realize that marketing simply comes down to two things, (1) human behavioral psychology and, (2) numbers.

Marketing is all about how to get the most people to do what you want them to do at the least cost.

Marketing answers questions such as:

• How do you get people to pick up the phone and call you?

• How do you get people to jump in their car right now and come down to your office or store?

• How do you get people to tell other people about your products or services?

• How do you get people to visit your website?

• How do you get people to pull their hard earned money out of their pockets and willingly give it to you?

And lastly...

• How do you get the absolute greatest number of people to do all the things above at the lowest cost and the highest return on your marketing dollars?

So I started applying my new found knowledge to the real world and experienced amazing results.

Looking for bigger challenges I left Arthur Andersen (I still love that company and the people I worked with there and was devastated when the Enron disaster crushed the company).

I joined a company that ran a string of senior living communities for independent senior adults, as their Vice President of Sales and Marketing.

If you think YOU have marketing challenges, try convincing your elderly parents (who are still healthy) to abandon their home they've lived in for many years, and come to live in a senior living facility.

That was an extremely tough sell. I learned a lot about marketing during this experience.

Today, I'm "the" direct marketing expert in the hot tub retail and pool construction industry and I use the EXACT same marketing methods to get people to buy hot tubs and pools as I used to get seniors to leave their homes and move into our facilities. (more on this later on down the page)

After my experience in the senior living industry I became the Senior Vice President of Strategic Marketing Initiatives for a $500M logistics company.

Within a year we were bought out by a German company. So in 2001, I took my know-how and started Marketing Best Practices Inc., a small business marketing firm.

That's when the Small Business Marketing Best Practices Newsletter was born. It's a weekly newsletter that is received by thousands of small business owners in over 43 different countries around the world.

What makes this newsletter different from every marketing newsletter on the net is that in every edition you get to actually SEE very specific examples of the marketing tactic I'm talking about.

In 2003 I published my book titled, "The Small Business Marketing Bible," which has become one of the best selling marketing books on the Internet. People from around the world have raved about it and what it has done to dramatically change their businesses.

In 2003 I also decided to take my own advice and focus on a niche market. As I mentioned earlier, I'm "the" direct marketing expert in the hot tub retail and pool construction industry. Much of my time is spent with this group of business owners.

Most of my speaking engagements are in this industry and although I don't offer any more one-on-one coaching or consulting services, I do offer some of my time to major manufacturers in the spa and pool industry.

On the personal side, I enjoy spending time with my beautiful family. My wife Ingrid, and my children Sterling (9) and Alina (4) whom I adopted at birth are my life. We enjoy traveling together to fun places, visiting the local park, and reading cool books.

As much as I love running my companies, my most treasured time is spent with my family. I couldn't ask for better partner to spend my life with.  She is "fantastico" (as they would say in Bolivia).

I also enjoy playing sports and exercising. Basketball has been my passion for many years, but playing the game every day has taken it's toll on me.

Back surgery and foot surgery has forced me to retire from the sport (that's probably a good thing because my game was getting pretty ugly).

Now days my favorite sport is skiing.  I learned how to ski while serving in the military in Europe.  Every year I try to make at least one ski trip to Utah during the winter season.

I also do a lot of running and cross training to keep myself in shape.  (It's hard not to keep in shape when your wife is a marathon runner!)

I want to thank you for visiting my site. You'll find a lot of small business marketing ideas and information here. If you like what you see while you're here, would do me a favor and tell a friend about this site. They'll be glad you did - - and so will I.

David Frey