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There is no denying the lesson that your chances of success are much enhanced if you manage to catch the right wave. A rising tide, like they say, raises all ships. People who’ve gotten in on any boom early, be it oil, real estate, stocks, or semiconductors, have prospered out of all proportion to normal businesspeople. These great waves have usually been caused by some massive shift in the structure of society. The baby boom, information age, beginning or end of inflation or the cold war have not only changed society, they’ve made many of the first guys to recognize their financial implications rich. The change in New York City’s better housing stock from rental to tenant ownership was a seismic event in that market. Once I’d gotten in on it, I was always looking for the next great wave. The deregulation of the entire world’s communications network may well turn out to be the biggest structural shift in the history of business. It clearly makes anything as small as a shift in the ownership structure of New York apartment buildings seem like a joke by comparison. IDT is, in my biased opinion, a great company. Our stature, though, has clearly been increased a hundredfold by the fact that we were surfing on top of the biggest tidal wave ever.
Back to the co-oping, though. Just as everyone predicted, the conversion market eventually petered out. Just then, fortunately, a new opportunity presented itself. One that would let me fulfill my dream of becoming a publisher. We had, by this time, expanded our brochure distribution routes to include not only hotels, but military bases. In hotels, you find a few independently distributed brochures for establishments that are trying to attract travelers. The travel and recreation offices at the military bases, though, were literally filled with every kind of leaflet imaginable, offering discounts to uniformed personnel. Unlike normal travel brochures, which are always four inches wide by nine inches high, the literature at the army bases wouldn’t fit into any of our standard displays.
A thought occurred to me to reprint the various establishments’ special military offerings in some nice indexed type of directory, which we’d give away to every enlisted man or woman. Every soldier would want one, since it would tell him how to save money. The bases would love them because it would improve morale and eliminate clutter at the travel offices. And the advertisers would love it, since we would charge them much less than their current combined printing and distribution cost. The directory was an immediate hit. Hundreds of clients signed up almost immediately. This, of course, made me happiest of everybody. As word of the directories’ tremendous business-generating success got out, it looked like the advertising for our second edition might more than double. Not only that, but letters of thanks from soldiers and requests for more books from the bases were pouring in daily. Everybody loved us, and we were making money hand over fist. It was like someone had given us the key to the mint and was letting us print our own currency. In fact, to make the directory look even more official, we actually reprinted on its cover the great seal of the United States, which we copied off a real dollar bill.
That was how they got us. Not everyone, you see, was so happy about the success of our directories. There was one party in Washington who hated our book, a competitor who put out a similar book of their own. At first I didn’t even know this competitor’s book existed. We gave away thousands of books for free weekly, while the competitor charged over $10 for their guide. It was, therefore, rarely seen. Even if you got a copy, you’d find it was complicated to understand and printed on poor paper.
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