Nano Mobile Healthcare Inc (VNTH)

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Interesting Interview with Jeremy Barbera, 20 years ago...

Has a Very familiar ring to it though... Don't you think

http://www.inc.com/magazine/19950801/2363.html

Assume the Position
Metro Services Group Inc. · Founded: 1987 · Start-up capital: $900 · 1994 revenues: $6.4 million 1995 projected revenues: $7.5 million

Creating a company from nothing isn't so hard, according to Jeremy Barbera. He says it's really just a question of positioning. "If you don't position your company as successful, no one on the receiving end is going to assume it is."

Barbera started his direct-marketing company, Metro Services Group, with just $900 in personal savings. Though he worked at his living-room table, "the best thing I ever did," he says, was to rent a Madison Avenue address for $200 a month through a business incubator. Barbera knew that the clients he wanted, large financial-services firms, "needed to at least think that we were a 'we.' "

From the start, Barbera aimed for major-league clientele. But how do you get the attention of American Express? "You have to be a little arrogant and say that you're capable of doing something that someone else isn't," he says. "Otherwise, there's no reason for them to take a chance." His company, Barbera explained, had skills American Express lacked. "I said, 'We'll get you more new clients than your staff can. We'll deliver a client to you next week. And if you don't believe me, you can pay us on contingency.' " Barbera made good on his cheeky promise. Right on schedule, he handed over the New York City Ballet, which American Express had courted fruitlessly for 15 years. American Express put Metro Services on retainer, unknowingly becoming its first client.

Barbera played elaborate charades to maintain Metro's bigger-than-we-really-are facade. On a typical day, he would phone a client to discuss a proposal, pledging that when his secretary finished typing it, he'd have it delivered -- before 5 p.m. Hanging up, he'd rush to his word processor and type. Document done, he'd change into sweats and sneakers, climb onto his bike, and deliver the proposal. "I was CEO at 2 p.m., secretary at 3:30 p.m., and messenger at 4:30 p.m."

Barbera says he lived in fear -- well merited, as it turned out -- of discovery. As bike messenger he had befriended a client's security guard. When Barbera subsequently appeared downtown to meet with that client (this time in CEO mode), he encountered the guard. She buzzed upstairs and announced, "Metro's messenger is down here, and he claims he has a meeting with you." Thinking quickly, Barbera responded to his customer's confusion, "Oh, my brother used to work for me delivering packages when he was down on his luck." Barbera sustained this multirole juggling for two years.

He leveraged the names of heavy-hitter clients to get extended payment terms from suppliers -- even before he had clients. As he scouted for data-management companies, he told them that he'd really love to throw a little sole-source business their way, but a client like, say, American Express needed longer payment terms. "I said, 'If you can't, we understand. We'll just find someone hungrier who can.' " Most he approached -- 19 out of 20 -- complied. Why? "I asked, as opposed to just taking it," he says. Barbera negotiated terms as long as eight months from many vendors, and, he says, "some even gave me a year."

Perhaps the key to successful bootstrapping isn't so much what you're doing as it is what other people think you're doing. "It all depends on the light you portray yourself in," says Barbera. -- C.C.