About the Author

I came up with this whole “local newsletter” idea after spending years in the publishing industry and doing the first Internet print magazine, the Channelseek Guide. While I was figuring out how to become a true online and offline local portal, my wife Jeanne kept the business in order handling the accounting and office administration for the businesses. After the dot com bubble burst of 2000, we sold both our publishing and Internet businesses to a New York competitor and started consulting for other local portal wannabes. The idea of having a website that was community focused, not defined by zip codes but by the community boundaries, was fairly new and uncharted up until 2003. That’s when I began building his first local portal, atGeist.com, in my backyard. On July 4th, 2004, I decided to announce atGeist.com to the Geist Reservoir community by placing four color flyers in his Crossing South neighborhood mailboxes of 38 homes. A few weeks later, the USPS sent me a fine for $14.00 for placing sales flyers in the mailboxes. You might say my first newsletter wasn’t very successful. At first, atGeist.com was only a website and a part-time hobby. I was consulting for about three steady clients doing Internet marketing and website development. Jeanne set up the books for the side venture while she continued to work part-time for a healthcare consulting firm. It was late 2004 when the idea of doing a print newsletter to the Geist community came about, and in April 2005 the “atGeist Community Newsletter” debuted. The first issue was black and white, only four pages in length, and mailed out to a mere 2,500 Geist residents. Then the phone started to ring. The May issue was eight pages and the July issue was 28 pages. “What about the June issue?” you might ask. We were so overwhelmed with advertising inquiries and the production of 28 pages that the June issue never got out! Today, the “atGeist Community Newsletter” is distributed via mail and local distribution to thousands of Geist residents and businesses each month in full color via direct mail and through local supermarkets and retailers. Jeanne soon left her part-time job and worked from home full-time tending to the business growth and two teenage kids at Bishop Chatard High School. I began the slow process of cutting back on his outside consulting to focus more on the expansion of the atGeist.com model. Today, both Jeanne and I work full-time on atGeist.com and the recently launched atFishers.com in neighboring Fishers, Indiana.