Marketing Director
An educational and training company providing seminars on finance, investment, and entrepreneurship. A division of TargetPublishing, Jefferson Institute was owned by Howard Ruff, a leading financial adviser who produced and published Ruff Times, thenation’s largest financial and investment newsletter at that time. I was hired as a writer/editor and promoted in less than a year toMarketing Director.• Wrote and edited various newsletters, including Ruff Times, Mutual Fund Money Letter, Finance Over 50, The CompleatOption Report, Women$ense, Jack Anderson Confidential and Ruff Notes. Also responsible for producing other revenue-generating products, such as reports on Swiss banking, options trading, mutual fund Investing, gold mining stocks and more.• Conceived and produced Ruff Notes as a distribution method for advertising inserts. Initial issue produced $600,000+.• Generated more than $2.3 million in revenue from new product lines, including DVDs on investing.• Organized and supervised training seminars on options investing. DVDs of the seminars are still used and sold today.• Directed extensive advertising campaign in major daily newspapers and magazines to reach goal of 1,000 annual trip sales.Designed and scheduled all ads, as well as brochures and materials sent as follow-up to inquiries.• Created a travel handbook incomparable with any other travel industry publication. This resulted in a dramatic reduction incustomer service calls.• Personally negotiated the company's largest group sales for several consecutive years—each worth more than $100,000.• Developed several innovative methods of generating sales that increased the sales mix to 70% referral business.