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mini-Bio for: |
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fizzlers.com. Fizzlers was created by Mike Way over a two year
period between 2002 thru 2004. Mike Way began his entrepreneurial
journey in 1984 when he left Xerox Corp to start his own firm,
Creative Computer Specialist (CCS). CCS’s main business was to
create specialized software for unique vertical markets like
churches, real estate and miscellaneous industry specific
applications. Creative Computer Specialist is the parent company of
fizzlers.com.To market his then new company, CCS, Mike Way began an aggressive home-grown guerilla marketing campaign to spread the word about his company’s service. So successful was the effort that many of Mr. Way’s computer clients inquired as to who was doing the marketing for CCS. When they discovered that it was in fact Mike Way, many retained Mr. Way to produce marketing for their organizations. The freelance marketing met with instant success. As such, Mike Way launched, The Mike Way Advertising Agency and Communications Group. The focus of the agency was to provide low-cost yet highly effective marketing for small-to-medium sized businesses. The “Agency” was awarded Success Magazine’s Renegade Entrepreneur of the Year. During the interim, Mr. Way continued to explore opportunities that led to book authorship, newsletter publisher and motivational speaking. The Newsletter, also featured an article that praised Mr. Way's unconventional yet highly successful approach to small business marketing & advertising. In 2001, quite by accident, Mike Way discovered that a whopping 90+ % of small businesses in suburban and rural area had no web presence. Most of these small businesses were very good about whatever their specific specialty was, but had little to no idea as to how to get their businesses onto the Internet. Over the next three years, Mike Way developed and created a unique and proprietary Internet database that would allow consumers to find an incredible array of goods and services within a few miles of where the searcher lived or worked. The new service was christened ‘fizzlers.com’ and began testing and limited operations in three markets in May of 2004. After working out the nuances of this unique website, the official roll out of fizzlers.com began in earnest operating in the Maryland, the District of Columbia and Northern Virginia markets areas. The news of fizzlers.com has spread primarily via word-of-mouth. In February of 2008 demand on the fizzlers servers peaked and signaled a move toward the next level of growth. Fizzlers moved to its new high-horsepower servers on March 1st. The new servers can now handle tens of thousands of request per second with no noticeable slow down in speed. Fizzlers also became a Maryland LLC during this growth period. Simultaneously, Mike Way launched a national campaign to recruit businesses and organizations in all 50 states to join the fizzlers.com family. As a new state, city or town reaches a specified number of subscribing businesses, a unique home page for that locale is created which caters strictly to the consumer demands within that region. For example, Maryland has a thousand plus businesses that cater to boaters while Oklahoma, much less a boating capital, has a wealth of information on feed, grain and farm/ranch support businesses. Currently California and Illinois are generating the most interest. To learn more about what Mr. Way and his team are rolling out next, check back here often. |
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At the time of this printing Success Magazine was owned by Lang Communications in New York City. Success is now published by Video Plus based in Dallas Texas and the reprint of this article in no way acts as an endorsement from the current editorial board of the ReLaunched Success Magazine. This article appears here as a historical annotation to the advertising career of fizzlers.com CEO & founder, Mike Way |
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