Short Bio

Jim grew up as a small white kid in a changing neighborhood in Detroit. He is still a small white kid (he’s learned to live with it) but a lot older.

Fortunately he was sent to parochial school or he may not have made it out alive. He ended up going to Michigan State (The smart people went to University of Michigan) and studied Personnel Administration because he thought it was about how to run an organization. It wasn’t but none-the-less he got his degree and being fearful of having a 9 to 5 job he went into sales.

Jim’s first job was selling residential real-estate at a time when mortgage interest rates were 14%. He then moved to selling advertising for a directory called the Thomas Register of American Manufacturers. Jim loved the job calling on manufacturing companies and became a hall of fame rep. Eventually, he was given the opportunity to run the Wisconsin territory. At his peak he had 16 sales reps scouring the Wisconsin market selling advertising.

After years of being one of the top performing territories in the country some idiot came up with this idea of The Internet. When he saw his first browser the idea of starting Top Floor came soon afterwords. Jim built the Top Floor business from the Thomas customer base and then as things continued to evolve it became clear that in order to become the kind of company he wanted Top Floor to be, he needed to break away from Thomas.

While Top Floor started out building and optimizing websites for the search engines, the company soon began managing paid search advertising as well. As things continued to evolve the team moved into offering comprehensive digital marketing services which included email marketing, social, content, etc.

Top Floor continues to evolve with the market. Digital marketing is fascinating. It never stops evolving which means you can never rest on your laurels. Keeping up with these changes is a challenge. However the biggest challenge he works at everyday is creating an organization whose culture facilitates success for clients and team members.