Valley PR Blog

8 Things You Didn’t Know About Me (Not That Anyone Asked)

By Dan Wool on January 17th, 2008 In Valley PR Blog

Is it still a tag meme if noone tags you to write about it?  Probably not. But several PR bloggers I respect recently responded to an “8 Things You Didn’t Know About Me” thread and it cured some writer’s block. We’ve not been tagged but I thought it would be fun for our Valley PR Bloggers anyway.

Here goes with the Dan Wool 8:

1. I’m a “Valley guy”. Not “of the Sun” or “Silicon” but San Fernando. I grew up in Northridge, CA in the ’70’s. I stayed in L.A. for college and 14 years of my PR career. I came to beiger pastures here in Phoenix three years ago. Haven’t regretted it for a second.

2. My first job was Spam 1.0. In middle school, real estate agents would drop my brother and I off with a box of branded doodle pads, key chains, jar openers, etc. and we’d go door-to-door braving pitbulls and poorly timed sprinkler systems. Over a couple years, we walked just about the entire Valley floor.

3. In 10th Grade, I was a computer geek. I was basically Anthony Michael Hall in Sixteen Candles. I owned a Commodore 64.  I was an expert BASIC programmer. I was in a user group. I copied video games on 5 1/4″ floppies. I participated on BBSs. (64k, from which the computer took part of its name, is about the size of a Word doc — that was the memory of the whole computer). This is the reason I both love the Internet and laugh at the Internet-reared.

4. I’m a USC Trojan who found his first PR job in the UCLA Daily Bruin.

5. At said job, I helped do entertainment PR for two eventual state governors: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura. 

6. I’m slightly responsible for your iPod. Stay with me.  Napster hired mPRm (the interactive PR firm I worked at) in late 1999. For over a year, I kept the media at bay as the music industry tried to shut them down. We generated positive cover stories in Newsweek, Business Week, Fortune and The New York Times. We got heavy-hitting political types involved. It was a great example of why you hire a PR firm in crisis — to help focus on operations.  Eventually Napster settled and became a “legit” music provider. But, by staying afloat, Napster created a huge market for digital music, opening the door for Steve Jobs & co.

7. My all-time favorite client is Bob Ezrin - Ezrin is best known for producing some of the greatest rock albums in history.  At mPRm, we launched his company Enigma Digital. Bob crystalized for me that PR is about business consultation, not publicity. Our PR plan was critical to his business plan (best clients to have). Bob gave me my best writing lesson: “More Hemingway, less Proust”. He also taught me to trust my gut, to strategically leverage other clients to get his company ink, and, most of all, to relax and not to take success so personally. (On one media tour in SF, he even handed me some Greek worry beads. “You need these more than me,” he said). Sometimes, clients are so good as to become unwitting mentors — that was Ezrin.

8. I’m an organic gardener and prefer organic foods.  Once you have kids and begin to feed them solid foods, you stop and realize how much poison is added to our diets. I won’t go there and my body’s healthier for it.  While that means I’ll probably get hit by a bus instead of dying from cancer, I’m at least growing delicious lettuce right now.

That’s it. In the spirit of the meme, I’ll tag my fellow bloggers: Angelo, Linda, Charlotte and Len for their eight.

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