LionWing Ltd is a British limited company that holds a global range of intellectual property patents and copyrights for books, publications, Internet based technologies and content. The company also provides international consultancy for brand diversification, creative marketing and business development. Its clients have included Entwistle & Cappucci LLC who in the height of the WorldCom, Enron and Freddie Mac scandals were leading the charge against securities fraud in the USA and recovering billions in misappropriated pension funds. Other clients have also included philanthropic organisations, such as Newtech Recycling, who managed to change the law in the USA regarding ewaste and computer disposal. From a blue-chip perspective, LionWing has also consulted on a reseller friendly ecommerce solution for United Stationers (now Essendant) & SAP, both of which are fortune 500 companies.

Perhaps one of the highlights for this business occurred when asked by several surviving members of the SAS who were active in the Iranian Embassy siege, to help them create and publish a definitive account of the rescue. I enlisted Will Pearson as our writer and put together a publishing deal with Alan Samson, then head of fact & fiction at The Orion Publishing Group. The deal successfully concluded with the release of the book Go! Go! Go! The book soon became a best seller in 50 countries, which in turn led to the production of the Netflix film ‘6 Days’.

LionWing was founded by a consortium of leading creative, marketing, software, legal and business specialists from around the World. As one of the original founders, I have been primarily responsible for this business’s development and many of its successes.

Newtech Recycling was heavily involved with disposing of old CRT computer monitors and hardware such as desktop computers, laptops and servers. It is important to mention that all these items contain highly valuable materials, such as gold, silver, lead, copper, alloys and so on. The reclamation of these materials is often referred to as urban mining by the press. However, perhaps less commonly known, is the fact that this IT hardware also contains many more deadly materials, such as beryllium, cadmium, mercury, chromium and so much more. If dumped in landfill sites or disposed of incorrectly these toxic pollutants can end up poisoning the water tables and ultimately us. With this in mind, the EPA has classified old computer hardware as Toxic Solid Waste, which means it needs to be disposed of safely!

My mission for Newtech was simple. I had to help market and grow Newtech Recycling to a size where the company could start cleanly processing ewaste for all the biggest IT brands and in fact the State of New Jersey. To achieve this goal, I created an Internet centric marketing plan and deployed strategies and tactics that generated new business growth from B2B, B2C, NFP, Educational and Governmental sectors. My strategies included the design & development of a range of highly advanced SEO websites, Social Media Marketing & Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

In terms of search engine marketing, I grew the company from a small Google AdWords campaign to a massive campaign of close to 4 million Ads. I generated thousands of leads and also cut my employers advertising bill to a mere fraction of the competitors’ budget. This was achieved via several advanced SEM tactics and hundreds of hours of work. My strategy also included online reputation management (ORM) and via the “Google My Business” platform, I helped boost the Google reviews and questions features. This in turn gave Newtech a larger visual presence through Googles knowledge panels, thusly superseding any competing Ads in the ability to attract attention.

After developing a range of ‘specialized websites’ for Newtech I went on to develop and market a reverse logistics eCommerce platform (built using my own developers). This eCommerce system provided residents of NJ, NY & PA with a means of recycling their old smartphones, laptops and computers. Within the first 12 months of launching the platform we received requests to recycle well over 35,000 items.

The Newtech project was intense, especially in terms of content creation. I was creating movies, articles, promotions, websites, newsletters, advertising campaigns, emails for email marketing and even building contacts for our RMS. The good news resulting from all this work was that Newtech had grown into a leading computer IT ewaste recycler, that now held contracts with the State of New Jersey and Connecticut and was recycling all the leading IT brands including HP, DELL, SONY & CISCO.

Working very closely with the President and CEO of the company, I felt the peak of our achievement occurred when we successfully managed to get an ewaste recycling Bill passed in Congress. This Bill changed the recycling laws in the USA in an extremely positive way. From a philanthropic point of view Newtech Recycling was one of my most rewarding projects.

In late 2019, I was invited to meet with a Swiss Financier with regard to a military venture involving Aquila Aerospace (UAE), Bombardier Aircraft (Canada) and the UAE Air Force (UAEAF). As a result of that meeting, I was asked to create an online presence for the Aquila Aerospace Special Mission Aircraft Center (Aquila).

Aquila Aerospace is the first integration facility in the Gulf to produce special mission aircraft. Headquartered in Abu Dhabi, Aquila equips and modifies a multitude of aircraft for multidomain military, medical and maritime use.

The project required that I develop a sound understanding of both the military and business aspects of the venture. This involved a deep dive into the hi-tech world of intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance aircraft (I.S.R. for short). The learning curve was steep given the time frame to complete the project and the amount of written and design work required. However, the subject matter was incredibly fascinating and the people involved were inspirational, which helped motivate me to achieve the desired outcome.

To give you some idea of the challenges in creating content, the facility and aircraft were all cloaked in absolute secrecy. As you can imagine for these reasons it was almost impossible to get any photos, images or prewritten content for me to utilize. That said, after familiarizing myself with the business and market sector I proceeded to design 5 prototype website ideas, write the copy for each service, design 114 graphics / illustrations and hand code an entirely new website.

The new Aquila Aerospace website reached number one in Google within weeks of its completion. Furthermore, the venture was successfully concluded with Aquila Aerospace being absorbed into the UAE's national defence.

Village Office Supply Inc. (VOS) is a full-service office supply company providing: office supplies, furniture, PPE products, cleaning and janitorial supplies, printing and promotional products, coffee service, water service, and electronic recycling. The business was launched by two partners: James Entwistle (Jim) & Robert Mallin (Rob) and from a humble beginning went on to become the 5th largest independent office supplies company in the USA. VOS sold everything from HP to M3 products. In fact, VOS grew to become direct competitors with household brand names such as Staples and WB Masons.

I was invited by Jim & Rob to help them grow their ecommerce sales and develop their online brand back when they were a relatively small company. Before I started VOS was achieving a $1.3m PA turnover (in online sales). Within 36 months of me taking over VOS achieved a $26 million PA turnover (online) and a combined bricks & mortar annual turnover approaching $60 million.

I achieved this increase by introducing a multitude of tactics, one of which was designing advanced UX features within a new eCommerce frontend and developing a new taxonomy and product search system. This approach required integrating my bespoke software with an ordering platform provided by ECi. This technical union allowed us to pass orders from the frontend of the ecommerce solution into VOS’s back-office where orders could then be fulfilled by the wholesaler.

Other strategies included a first in search tactic, which required advanced SEO for over 47,000 individual products. I achieved this by developing a keyword rich HTML and JPG frontend that amplified image results by renaming 47k product photographs with the universal item number and name. I also created a Google merchant account to boost the keyword relationships between Google’s search index and our ecommerce platform.

Shortly after getting the website up to $26,000,000 PA, I focused on removing my departments overhead by introducing supplier sponsorship opportunities. In summary, this was an advertising feature that allowed Brands to promote their products and to appear first in search on our ecommerce platform.

After my marketing department had become self-funding, I then set to work on my next idea, a customer loyalty system. I designed and developed a community area for our websites clients to enjoy a reward points gift shop, online competitions and much more. The loyalty system was once again sponsored by our leading Brands who would supply competition gifts and reward points goodies in exchange for promotional advertising within the community feature.

Once the community and reward points features were completed, I moved forward to deploy a client retention strategy. The tactics for this were pretty straight forward; VOS had now been in business for years and amassed 14,000 clients. My mission was to bring back those clients whom had been poached by our competitors. To achieve this, I issued their accounts with reward points and sent them an email marketing campaign that every month reminded them of their balance, the freebies they could collect and the competition prizes they could win. To say this was a success would be a massive understatement. Within the first month we had over 400 lost clients requesting new accounts.

As a result of this success, I was invited by Matt Goldsby (Vice President of IT and Divisional CIO of United Stationers (now Essendant)) to consult with SAP and develop an industrywide eCommerce solution for the office supplies, furniture, IT consumables, janitorial and foods sectors. As mentioned, Village Office Supply had become the 5th largest independent reseller in the USA, however, today the majority of the business has been sold privately by the owners to Staples Inc. and other comparable competing interests.

YBC is one of the earliest pioneers in Information Technology Asset Disposition. Based in the USA, YBC works closely within the guidelines of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to help reverse corporate pollution caused by information technology.

I was contacted by Frank Latargia (YBC Chief Operations Officer) with regards to helping develop their business’s online marketing strategy. My brief from YBC was simple: I was to get them a number 1 organic position in Google within their catchment (e.g.: ITAD services in NJ) and to develop a long-term digital marketing strategy.

I started by writing YBC a basic marketing proposal and a summarized tactical strategy split into 3 simple phases of development and implementation. After this, I set to work designing a 68-page website with advanced SEO attributes, a newsroom, a price calculator for recycling IT hardware and a back office for processing leads, subscriptions and sending email newsletters. The content production for this website required me to write over 120 x A4 pages of copy, 14 articles & promotions and design over 900 website graphics.

After designing the website, I then developed a “Google My Business” profile & Social Media presence. I then proceeded to create several corporate documentaries, the highlight of which was a UN COP26 documentary about the need for IT asset disposition within data centers.

Finally, I implemented Google Analytics and created a Google AdWords campaign. Having successfully implemented SEO, SEM & ORM solutions we soon enjoyed a 600% growth in five-star Google reviews, ownership over a multitude of Google & Bing knowledge panels and an organic first in search dominance. Today YBC remains a powerful player in the world of ITAD and supports many fortune 500 companies with their computer disposal needs.

At the beginning of the Enron scandal, I was invited by Andrew J. Entwistle (Managing Partner) to help the American legal firm Entwistle & Cappucci (E & C). The partnership aspired to represent a growing number of Securities Class Action Plaintiffs who had lost substantial funds investing into the likes of Enron, WorldCom and later Freddie Mac (to name but a few). The project meant relocating from London and moving to NYC.

The brief was to use my design, technology, Internet marketing & business skills to promote E & C as the “Go-To” securities fraud litigator. This was achieved by firstly redesigning their website and building into it the largest, free, online library of securities fraud cases in the world. I marketed this ‘free resource’ to institutional investors and the press, ensuring we were quoted as the primary source of information on every class action reported (3000+ cases).

With the headline news of Enron, WorldCom & Freddie Mac’s fraud our E & C website soon became the ‘go-to-place’ for institutional investors to check which other companies were being accused of fraud, and how to become a claimant. Before long E & C was invited to become the lead litigator for many large institutional investors. Most notably, E & C became the lead plaintiff for the Royal Ahold case (settled out of court for $1.1 billion) for which I also created and managed the online news site.

Now established as the best securities fraud litigator in the USA, we clearly had an opportunity for offering institutional investors a second service. The idea was simple; using web-based technology I could check against trades for investments in companies accused of Securities fraud (also known as stock fraud and investment fraud). The solution was more successful than I could have ever imagined. We would usually discover and reclaim a multitude of investments each week, returning $100’s of millions every month - less E & C’s fees.

Today E & C is considered one of the best securities and business law firms in the U.S.A.

In 2020, I was invited by the owner of the Fighter Collection at the Imperial War Museum Duxford to help his flight simulator software company (Eagle Dynamics). As part of my 4-month consultancy agreement (for International Internet Marketing & Business Development), I wrote an advanced SEO and Internet marketing strategy for the executive team. The consultancy included a study of the customer journey and my recommendation for software and website UX changes. I was also asked to investigate and report on the online activity, sales statistics (mainly through Google Analytics) and the performance of key staff.

Within just a few months of working on this project it became very clear to me that Eagle Dynamics had a fantastic and as of yet, unexploited opportunity to develop the business. In essence, the business had over 11 million engaged users visiting their website over the year and a newsletter subscription base of over 250,000 people. With a few tweaks to the home page of the website and a change to the newsletter feature we could introduce a means of free publicity and new income generation from advertising.

This new opportunity would provide Eagle with an ability to create a self-funding marketing and media division within the organisation. This division could then go on to offer promotional exchanges both for revenue and free marketing.

exIT Technologies holds a particular area of expertise in decommissioning and reselling data center servers and network hardware (rack equipment). Data centers provide a multitude of business-critical services and are at the center of nearly all modern entertainment and cloud-based systems. For example; smartphones, video streaming, data storage, and not least of all the Internet all rely on data center technology.

A lesser-known fact within the consumer community is the knowledge that manufacturing data center hardware and running data centers, can be extremely damaging to the environment. To help resolve this problem, I approached exIT Technologies (exIT) with an idea to develop an ITAD service that helps reduce a data centers eco-damaging impact.

I should quickly mention that ITAD (IT asset disposition) is a set of practices to allow for the refurbishment, reuse, disposal, and/or recycling of data center IT equipment in a secure and environmentally conscientious manner.

exIT agreed to let me help them develop an ITAD brand. I started by producing a stakeholder’s report, customer journey proposal, marketing plan and a tactics proposal for FREE digital marketing, lead generation and customer retention. I then proceeded to design a logo for the new ITAD brand and coined the strapline “Your Choice is a Voice for Change”. Once a logo had been agreed I then hand coded and designed an ITAD website with advanced SEO to ensure a first-in-search organic position. The website included a price calculator for either selling or recycling used IT hardware. I also wrote a technical requirement brief and managed the development of an online back-office for processing leads and newsletter subscriptions.

To support the new brand further, I created 5 corporate videos, each pitching the idea of IT removal, recycling, reselling and hard drive destruction. Shortly after this, I created social media and search engine business profiles.

During this first phase of development, I successfully expanded the new brands presence to include Washington DC, Chicago and Miami. There was no question that IT hardware refurbishment, redeployment and recycling is a very necessary requirement to help make the IT industry more sustainable. However, I rapidly came to the conclusion that to make a sizable impact I would need to work for an organisation with larger resources. That said, whilst completing the website we received web leads requesting ITAD services for the disposal of 16,728 items. In fact, the new ITAD brand also received 241 phone calls in this period and we were invited to quote on work for companies such as General Dynamics and CAE Defense & Security to name but a few.

H W Fisher and Company is one of the top UK chartered accountancy firms, they support commercial enterprises, NFP organisations and private clients. H W Fisher invited me to ‘head up’ their Internet advisory company, MediaFish Ltd. As the Managing Director I sourced, recruited and trained a staff of 22, whilst providing Internet advice, support and services for both MediaFish & many of H W Fishers 3500 clients.

The appointment also required me to give event speeches to the NFP and governmental sectors. I also helped start-up Internet businesses, mainly with; venture capital, business planning, marketing and specifying website functionality. In addition to this we created websites for some well-established names in the NFP, R&D and commercial sectors.

In 2000 MediaFish was invited to design & develop the Compaq (HPE) user-group website. This project required me to plan the software architecture, frontend UX and overall administrational functionality and pitch the portal to Compaq representatives from 17 different countries. After we built the Compaq (HP) user-group site, I went on to design and manage the development of 8 core Internet products, including; a CMS, online membership platform, banner advertisement systems and eCommerce portals. Other notable clients included The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), Cambridge Display Technologies (the inventors of LEP’s) and many others.