Bio
Sergeant Newman82d Airborne Division
Blake Newman
In 1982, at age 17, I joined the 82d Airborne Division at Fort Bragg – an elite fighting force within the United States Army. I wanted the real deal – jumping from planes and humping up mountains. In 1984, I found myself in Honduras, training soldiers that looked young enough to still be Cub Scouts. Of course, at the time, I had never heard of Colonel Oliver North, Reagan’s secret war, the Contras or the Sandanistas or any Cuban-style socialism aiding leftist guerrillas in El Salvador.
… turns out that joining the Army was one of the best things that ever happened to me because it changed the way I thought. Military discipline, leadership and teamwork became the foundation of my career and the starting point of my leadership skills.
Soldiering shaped my mind forever and it continues to affect my way of thinking and decisions.
Son, you can go to jail or join the Army
Fortunately for me, I chose the Army. But, another turning point in my career was about 8 weeks before I was honorably discharged. For those infantry soldiers, like myself, whose only professional skills were killin’ … the Army offered a choice of vocational courses to help integrate us grunts back into society. My choices were bartending, auto mechanic or computer programming. After crushing my knees and suffering a couple of concussions on some bad jumps, I decided that a cush office job was for me. So, I chose the computer programming class.
Georgetown University to the Pentagon
Fast forward four years … by now, I have been accepted to the univeristy, graduated college with almost a straight A average, excelled as a cadet at Georgetown University in their Army ROTC program and was commissioned Infantry Lieutenant in the US Army Reserves. I end up getting a job offer at TRW, a defense contractor, and am assigned to the Pentagon where I worked in the Army Operations Center – somewhere underground … and am working on the Army World Wide Military Command and Control Information System. I had no idea at the time, but it was part of the MILNET, the military component of the Internet. This was back in 1989.
Defense Information Systems Agency
After 3 years, I leave TRW to actually work as a government employee at the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). In coordination with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, I’m working on the standards for the Internet and the world wide web. So, I get a clue and around 1995, the first year that we could actually buy domain names, and started registering domains. One of my investments was photographer.com. Turned out to be a good investment.
Photographer.com
After 4 years of working as a fed, I decided to leave corporate life and become an artist and an entrepreneur. I took up photography, leveraged my domain name, photographer.com, recruited 10 of the best and most talented photographers in Washington, DC and within 3 years became considered one of the top photography studios in the city. We specialized in wedding photography and photographed the weddings and special events of movie stars, rock stars, porn stars, presidents, foreign dignitaries, politicans, millionaires, billionaires, doctors and attorneys. Clients flew us all over the world; St. Thomas, Turks & Caicos Island, Italy, Hawaii, New York City, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, Los Angeles. It was great!
End of an era
But, after the 911, the Washington DC beltway snipers (Muhammed and Malvo), a couple of recessions and digital photography, the entire industry turned upside down. We went from charging $15,000-$20,000 to shoot a wedding to struggling for $2,000-$3,000. So, around 2005, I sold photographer.com, moved to California and transitioned from photography to web design where I created the company inQbation™.
inQbation™
It actually wasn’t much of a leap because I was working on the Internet protocol since 1989 at the pentagon, worked on one of DISA’s first websites in 1995 and by 2005, I had probably more experience with HTML than I had with photography. Besides, marketing and managing web designers wasn’t much different than marketing and managing photographers. What helped was my BS degree in Business and MS degree in Information Systems. I had just the right amount of business skills and experience, technical skills and experience, leadership skills and experience and design skills and experience to make that career transition easily.
DC to California to DC
Living and working in California was great. I loved every minute of it and now that I’m back in DC, I miss California every day. But, when the economy turned sour back in 2008, I made a strategic decision to move back to DC to pursue federal contracting. The bet paid off and within two years, inQbation™ has fashioned itself into one of DC’s top web design firms.
We are known throughout The World Bank Group, OMB, GSA, DHS, State Department, The White House and dozens of other high-level agencies and non-profit organizations around DC as a boutique web design agency that can deliver high-quality world-class web designs and mobile user interfaces in a short period of time. Give us pressure and deadlines and we’ll deliver. We also know our way around Section 508 compliance and SEO.
SEO
All along, I suppose my obsession has always been seach engine optimization (SEO). I kept photographer.com at the top of the Google charts for 10 years. I rarely had to advertise, other than to reinforce my brand.
Business came to me (Artists & Associates and photographer.com) through my own online guerrilla marketing. I was able to work as a sales consultant, listening to my clients, giving them expert advice and helping to match them up with the right photographer. I didn’t have to chase customers, beat the pavement or knock on doors. My inbound marketing, and the world-class brand that we developed, brought clients to me.
10 years later, I’m doing the exact same thing except I am promoting and managing web designers instead of photographers. I am providing business analysis and strategic planning instead of wedding consulting and planning.
So, in 2009, I started to conceive and develop SEO Quotient™. In 2010, I purchased SEOQ.com and on June 8th, we launched the site.
SEO Quotient™ is a place where business owners and web masters can analyze their website to diagnose how well prepared their website is to compete on Google and other search engines. It is also a directory of online marketing professionals. Finally, it is a professional social networking site where people can ask questions, get answers, discuss topics and collaborate.
Web Analytics
In college, I loved numbers, Math, Accounting, Calculus, Statistics, Logic, Computer Programming and Finance. It was actually a surprise to me. Since I dropped out of high school at age 16, my grade point average hovered around a D. I didn’t really know what I liked or was good at in school. I didn’t really spend enough time in school to figure it out.
But, on one of my first days at college, I sat in this huge auditorium with 1,000 students. It was a cold winter day (I got out of the Army in December and enrolled in college the next month), and the professor stood up on the stage and said that 80% of us would fail her course. I thought to myself, “after all the shit I went through to get here, nobody is going to tell me that I am going to fail.” So, I dug down and made an A in her class.
After class, I walked across campus to my next class, Calculus. Sitting in front of me was this cute girl named Sarita. She explained to me that in Spanish it means little Sarah. I asked her if she wanted to get together to study. Of course, she blew me off. Rejection! Well, a couple days later we had our first Calculus quiz. I scored 100% and she scored 45%. After class, she asked me if I would tutor her. :)
Class by class went by and I realized that I loved those numbers.
Anyway, fast forward to 2010, and I’m loving web analytics. I love the data, the graphs, the charts. So, when BLVDstatus, a real-time web analytics company decided that it was time for them to sell, I bought the company.
Back to school?
So, here it is … 2010+ and my career has now consisted of about 10 years military (3 years active, 7 years reserves), 5 years as a government employee, 5 years working in corporate and 10 years working as an entrepreneur in small business. Definitely, the most fun I have ever had was, and is, running my own business, helping others, empowering others and serving clients.
My next step, if a University will have me, is to teach college or university classes. I think that would be a great capstone to a career. So, if anybody knows anybody at University of Hawaii, Pepperdine in Malibu, maybe UVA in Charlottesville or perhaps Georgetown in Washington, DC … I would love to make that transition one day.
EDUCATION
• BS, Business Management, Decision Science, George Mason University
• MS, Information Systems, Information Technology, George Mason University
• LT, Military Science, Military Leadership, Georgetown University
EMPLOYMENT HISTORY
• 2010-present, Owner, BLVD status™, BLVDstatus.com
• 2010-present, Co-founder, SEO Quotient™, SEOQ.com
• 2009-present, eMarketing Consultant, The World Bank
• 2008-2009, Web Director, ICE.gov
• 2007-present, CEO, Director of Sales & Marketing, inQbation.com
• 2007-2008, Director of Business Development, dBurnsDesign.com
• 2005-2006, Realtor, real estate investor, sales consultant
• 1997-2005, Entrepreneur, Artists & Associates, photographer.com
• 1993-1997, Computer Specialist, DISA.mil
• 1989-1993, Software Engineer, TRW
• 1985-1999, Infantry Captain, US Army Reserves
• 1981-1985, Infantry Paratrooper, 82d Airborne Division
BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Blake Newman is a multi-talented, left-brain/right-brain thinker with an entrepreneurial spirit. With a BS degree in Business, MS degree in Information Systems and 10+ years experience in web consulting, project management and search marketing; Blake Newman is well equipped to lead and direct a variety of business development and online marketing projects and tasks.
An industry expert with regard to online marketing and search engine optimization (SEO); Blake Newman has been an honorary speaker and panelist at a number of meetings and conventions including, most recently, the Social Media Summit in Washington, DC held by the Immunization Action Coalition.
A social media and marketing enthusiast, Blake embraces new technologies to help his clients catapult their online marketing efforts. Blake is a great communicator, strategist, tactician, engineer, designer and artist. Many people have labeled Blake a polymath or Renaissance man. Blake is particularly passionate about leveraging search marketing, social media and web analytics to help maximize return on investment for online marketing programs.
LEADERSHIP QUALITIES
Groomed to be a leader while in the 82d Airborne Division, Newman attended the primary leadership development academy at Fort Bragg prior to his promotion to sergeant. Upon his honorable discharge, Newman joined the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program at Georgetown University (GU) in Washington DC where he refined his leadership skills. Newman applied these skills at George Mason University (GMU), leading many group activities, teaching at the local community college and for the next 15 years of his career across multiple entrepreneurial startups and management projects.
