Barry Silverstein

How did you pick your career? Did you know all along?

I thought I wanted to teach, so I started out as a high school English teacher. I enjoyed it but didn't see much in the way of advancing my career. Unfortunately, teaching does not pay well enough to support a family, and I had a wife who didn't work and two young children. I always loved creativity and writing, so I wondered if I could get a job utilizing those interests. I was able to get a job first as a pubic relations manager at a small college and then at an educational publisher as a senior advertising copywriter. Those jobs gave me enough experience to apply for a job as a corporate communications director at a database marketing company. That was the real start of my career in direct marketing. I knew very little about direct marketing when I took the job, but I learned a lot quickly! I found that direct marketing combined the best of the creative arts and scientific marketing and that really intrigued me. I eventually started my own direct marketing agency specializing in business-to-business marketing, and I wrote the first book about business-to-business Internet marketing. Direct marketing was great for me because I could use my love of writing in a disciplined way to help clients. I never intended to get into direct marketing -- it was really an accident -- but I ended up liking it enough to stay in it for my whole career.