About David White

Introduction

I am David White, people often ask me how I got to do what I do and a lot of people have said I should write a book on it, no doubt, one day I will. But for now, here it is in short form:

So here’s the human stuff: three kids (all boys).  Live in London. Have lived in Kew Gardens, Woking, Newbury, Reading, Swindon, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Bognor Regis, Worthing (born). I have just found my long lost son via Facebook which I think is a very nice thing and gives me another reason for loving my job and industry – it works!

So, I am not really going to talk about all my mates, School and playground antics, partners, lives and loves (done that already).  But more what I have ‘done’ with my life that relates to my online passions and how it has worked for me and just maybe, that could help you too, and that would be great…

my first business ventures

When I was about 12? I made a portable morse code device using a battery, balsa wood, wire and a bulb.  Then I went door to door attempting to sell what was frankly, rubbish. For a start you need more than one person, secondly both need to know morse and third, it was made using sellotape and tacks with no design whatsoever. The battery would role off if you tilted it. I got free entry to the Boys Brigade on that basis as one of the doors I knocked on was the local BB guy. I did a few things like this, all were basically ‘electrical’ projects.

Although I do remember being a star for making some Rose petal and Lanolin based hand cream for Grandma…

my education / first job

I loved electronics and having built a number of drum machines and gadgets (mainly to impress girlfriends). I established that there was a crazy company who wanted to pay me to go to college and do the course I wanted to do anyway. It was ideal… Against all the odds, apparently I was one of 500, I won an apprenticeship at Racal Decca.

It was two years before I actually started work – and where was I working – in the R & D labs. It was just one long permanent holiday in heaven… As the token student I also had the fab job of identifying all the test equipment and putting it back in stores when it was not being used. This did not always go down well as the real scientists needed their equipment and I was ‘knicking’ the equipment. So I set up a stash in the loft where I took the equipment as a holding place, that way if someone got fed up, I could return it quickly.

This was in the days before quality, health and safety, this was seat of your pants fix things, get the job done. I really should not have been storing kit in the loft. But it suited me as I could visit my lair, sometimes for days and I set up my own lab, based on all this equipment that was ‘on its way’ to stores.

Basically, as an R & D place, companies would send us stuff on spec. They would hope that we would specify their equipment and they would have an order. Well one day a rather nice all in one keyboard passed my eyes and I had a Sinclair Spectrum computer, you may remember them in the early days of ‘micros’, well they had tiny rubber keys… So I made the thing fit…

Saga Systems / first business

Before I was 20 I had made my first £million. I spent it like it was never going to stop. I had no idea as to the value of money and would regularly drive my Porsche to Paris for no reason at all – other than that was a nice way to spend the weekend, and the ladies loved it. My first divorce wiped out all cash and I had to start again…

my second job – Xerox

The drill was three months of product training and indoctrination as to the way that Xerox works. I loved my trainer, Clive, as did all the everyone, he was a real ‘super star’, amazing experience.

Once working it was in the office early Monday morning and the only time you would expected / allowed in the office at any other time was if you were visiting the showroom, accompanied by a client.

I won honours club in the first quarter and sold two of their largest machines, without knowing how they worked – I did not even know how to turn them on. Massive deal – I  felt like I was the highest paid Taxi driver.

I was with Xerox for about three years and thoroughly enjoyed becoming a ‘Xeroid’.

Alterindex / Weboptimiser

I basically married my knowledge of databases, machine level programming and sales to create a telemarketing agency – Alterndex. After four years – in 1996 started trading as Weboptimiser, two years later I bought our first domain name – Weboptimiser.com

Weboptimiser are now the established market leader in search engine marketing specialising in search engine optimisation and pay per click marketing services. Major clients large and small, multimillion £turnover. We are establishing a new brand in Social Media and Email Marketing called SOICH – Social media Integration Choices.

Chair of IAB UK and IAB Europe Search Task force

Whilst Managing Director at Weboptimiser I have had the great privilege and honour to work with our main trade organisations, the Internet Advertising Bureau where in Europe I have worked briefly with Danny Meadows-Klue and later Alain Heureux, and at IAB UK, Guy Phillipson. Whilst there I was keen to establish a mission statement so that people would know what we were aiming to achieve and to help determine industry best practice – which brought some consternation at the time. Best practice is now continuously championed by the IAB and helped determine a definition of what advanced search marketing is, so as potential clients had a base from which to get a clear view – as it is my determination to make Search Engine Marketing to be seen as the science that it is.

Federation of Small Business and ABBA

I have also spent a lot of time working with the Federation of Small Business, where I am helping to champion the plight of small businesses in London and I regularly attend London Policy Unit meetings that has helped me to talk to Londons Governers, this has been very useful. Similarly I have become a member of ABBA ( I don’t wear flares or high heeled boots) – The Association for Business to Business Agencies.

The key thing that I enjoy the most is that we sit in rooms as competitors, but we work together as colleagues. It works – so implore others to get involved, pull up a chair and lets see how we can make everyones lives better!

my conclusions…

There is not I in team! You really can achieve anything. I have played with big toys (Frigates/Missiles/Cars), I have met some of the big boys, (Steve Jobs, Gordon Brown) and I have touched big money. So I know that they all real (something that I used to wonder about as a kid). The world is your oyster, there is just so much to do, joy to be had.

my top top tip is…

Social Media is somewhere where you can display your human tendencies. The quicker you  get ‘human’ online, the quicker you will make online work for you.

I think that in the long run, as we move more and more to a more integrated life; life with IP (internet protocol), then communications will be faster, more efficient etc, but it will be much more centred on people than it already is. People should, are and will remain the foundation pillar of all we do. The more people that put themselves online the more valuable online becomes, as we are already seeing with the likes of Linkedin, Facebook, Social Media in fact.