Who and How
I’m a father, husband, sibling, and friend. Also a widely published author, speaker, producer, and digital media pioneer long ago turned digital apostate. College-free, I describe my four-year high school career as the best eight days of my life. Chased out of two different countries by two different military conscriptions (back in the early 1970s when I still had one good knee) with a history of layovers at airports that lasted longer than most of my corporate jobs.
Perhaps because I've never entertained an actual career ambition, my professional life unfolded over the years as a series of accidental but prophetic firsts, starting with Einstein's Computer Guides, the first major how-to book series on personal computers, and Einstein and Sandom Inc., the nation’s first digital advertising agency — both way back in 1984/85. Then came Room Service Hawaii, the nation’s first home-away-from-home cable shopping channel in the early 1990s. Returned to NYC for the Dot Com madness where — ensconced like an outsized Yoda at rooftop designer vodka parties — I introduced Smart Syndication, the first ecommerce syndication network.
The New York Times referred to me in the early 21st century as the Mick Jagger of digital media. Seemed to bear a faint resemblance to a compliment at the time, but now I think it was because — like Mick Jagger — I was the only butt-ugly old coot in an industry full of good looking young hipsters.
I went from digital media pioneer to digital apostate in 2004 — some years before Youtube and Netflix and Facebook and smartphones ruled the world — when I was the first to step out and warn against the rise of what we all recognize now as a default meta-addiction to all things media and all things digital. Addiction, I claimed, had emerged as the new rule rather than the exception. Hardly a surprise now or then that my digital career nose-dived like a kamikaze.
Looking back, my history of accidental but prophetic firsts seems like a perfectly natural progression for a semi-competent guy with way too much spare time on his hands and a litany of former drug habits to support. Now — firmly ensconced in my 70s — I’ve lost enough people I love, survived enough close encounters with my own mortality, and compiled enough regrets to understand finally how to prioritize my time and talents. Better late than never.
Need a seasoned speaker to rally the troops?
From the early 1980s through the Dot Com Era of the 1990s, I appeared as a guest speaker at countless digital industry events, seminars, and lectures, and was a featured guest in many dozens of print, radio, and TV interviews, including venues like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Money Magazine, Forbes, Lou Dobbs, PC Magazine, George, Personal Computing, Red Herring Magazine, Anderson Cooper 360, and The Today Show.
Need a compelling, engaging, and entertaining guest for your next podcast, TV, radio, or print interview? Looking for someone funny, eclectic, and profound? Someone almost as captivating as a cat-video marathon? Been there, done that many many times. I’ll bring the goods, something your listeners and readers will want to hear and want to read. So let’s talk. Send your email query to moreinfo@qolrm.com. We’ll make it work…
[Want to invite Jeff Einstein to speak at your next event? Or want to license the Quality of Life Toolkit for your parents group, school, congregation, public agency, corporation or association? Contact us at moreinfo@qolrm.com.]
