I feel like this will be a trip into "The Way Back Machine", but since my life predates that Internet phenomenon, you're in even more trouble than if we just went back to the beginning of the Web. But, with that disclaimer, here goes!

I was born on May 30, 1961, the first child of Julius C. Garnes, Jr. and Frances O. Garnes. Boy, were they lucky to have me! The first 14 months of my life were relatively uneventful. I spent most of my time sleeping, smiling, pooping, and drinking formula from a bottle.

In retrospect, I feel somewhat cheated by those days, because my mother didn't breast feed me, but those were the days when the government was supporting the efforts of the cereal companies to convince mothers that formula was better than mother's milk. What a joke! In any event, from a nutritional stand point, I made up for lost time once I was able to eat solid food, and I've never missed my share at meal time since.

Now, as I said, the first 14 months of my life were relatively uneventful, but that all changed on August 3, 1962, when my only sibling was born. While my parents were very happy with the arrival of Dale Rene Garnes, I have to confess it was not a cherished day in my history, because as a kid, Dale was a major pain in my "ass-ociation" with my parents. Naturally, sibling rivalaries are well documented in history, and I was actually pretty proud of the fact that all the way through college our rivalry stacked right up there with Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.

In any event, I learned to adjust to the reality that she wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, and therefore, I would have to come up with new and different ways to get attention, and coexist with her at the same time. And, I actually became quite creative in my attention getting prowess. The only problem is that the methods I chose often got the attention of my parents, and my father's belt at the same time. Some of you may remember that during the 60's, it was still permissible to use corporal punishment with your children, and my father was one of the more skilled technicians with the real cowhide belts that were readily available back then. Fortunately for my sister, most his belts were broken in on my backside, and not hers, because no matter what trouble we got into, I always insisted on being the one who appeared to be the ring leader on it.

What I learned from these experiences though is that a parent's love transends their need to discipline you from time to time, that cowhide is a very durable material, and that it is much preferred to your father's steel toed work shoes (ouch!).

Growing up in the 60's was a blast, especially as I look back and now fully appreciate all that was going on back then. Besides the fact that the music was great, and that we lived in a comfortable home in Montclair, New Jersey, some of the most incredible events in the history of post Civil War America occurred in the 60's, including my arrival! You had the civil rights movement, and all the hysteria that surrounded it. I still distinctly remember the day Martin Luther King was shot, because my mother was driving us to school when I heard about it from one of the neighborhood kids who hitched a ride to school with us. Then, you had the birth of women's rights, including the issue of choice, and the assasination of John F. Kennedy, just to name a few. Of course, I remember hippies, and Flower Power, and everybody running around in Dashikis, or peace signs on their jean jackets. What a time that was!

Okay, let me see if I can fast forward a little here. As a kid, I was an average student, and I loved baseball and little league football. I was probably the smallest catcher and smallest guard ever to play those positions. But, I loved it. As I got older, and entered high school, I was an average student, and an above average athlete, and I continued to play baseball, but I gave up football during after my sophmore year, because I wanted to concentrate on baseball. My junior year in high school, I was scouted by an L.A. Dodger scout by the name of Gil Basetti (think that's spelled right). He invited me to try out for a rookie club the Dodgers used to operate to keep promising prospects in the pipeline without violating their amateur status. I was excited, but that also ended up being the year that I got mononucleosis, and had to be on bed rest for the summer, so I didn't get that shot. By the following year when I graduated from high school, I had set my sites on college and law school, and didn't seriously pursue professional sports as an option.

I attended college at the University of Pittsburgh. I was fortunate to be in the incoming class that included Dan Marino. Those were good years in Pittsburgh. The Pirates won the World Series, the Steelers were beating up on the Cowboys in two Super Bowls (I'm a Cowboy fan!), and Pitt still knew how to play football back then. It was also an exciting time for Pitt basketball, because we were leaving the "Eastern Eight" to join the Big East. What a great move that was!

Anyway, college was incredible, especially on the days I went to class. I turned out to be an above average student, majoring in Poltical Science and Latin American Studies, the former which I hated, and the latter which I loved, and fortunately for me, the whole time, I knew exactly what I wanted to do when I finished. I was a very rare individual, because I knew I wanted to go to law school, even before I went into college. Most people I knew didn't even know what they wanted to take next semester let alone what they wanted to do when they graduated.

I entered law school in 1983. After scoring one of the lowest scores in history on the LSAT, George Washington University, The National Law Center, decided I was just the kind of individual they were looking for, so not only did they accept me, but they offered me a tuition remission as an enticement. That's what they call it when you're too stupid be on scholarship, but they've got an empty seat anyway! As it turns out, GW is one of the better law schools in the country, which baffles me to this day as to what they thought they were doing with they admitted me. Must have been a dare between the dean of admissions and some other school official.

I loved and hated law school! But, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that despite the fact that I initially felt out of place academically, that I eventually found other students who were as average as I was, and quite a few who were intellectually more gifted, but had the common sense of a lamp post.

While law school was a mixed bag compared to the total college experience, I will always cherish many of the relationships I developed with other students, and I certainly picked up some wicked lawyering skills. My favorite activities (academic of course) were participating in the Civil Litigation Clinic, where I got to represent real clients in court as a "Student Litigator", and serving as Editor-In-Chief of the Consumer Protection Reporting Service. I was also fortunate to meet and have as my advisor a gentleman by the name of Donald P. Rothschild, one of the most extraordinary men I have ever met. Everything he did showed a commitment to causes dear to him, and fortunately for alot of indigent community members, one of those causes was pro bono legal work.

My Legal Career

Get ready to hear about one of the most incredible legal careers in the history of American jurisprudence ( I have no idea what that word means). During my legal studies, I was fortunate to have the chance to do two things that I think dramatically advanced my legal career. The first was the opportunity to participate in the Student Litigator program at GW which gave me the opportunity to see exactly what I would be getting myself into as a trial attorney. The second was to clerk for a small law firm which conducted a general practice, which in turn allowed me to quickly identify the areas of law that were of most interest to me.

Law school didn't really give you a feel for what you'd really like to do when you get out. For example, I got a "D" in Torts, which is the area of law that deals with personal injury litigation, and other types of civil wrongs, yet, my first position fresh out of law school was with one of the top Tort law firms in Washington, D.C. As it turns out, it was another one of those interesting twists of fate. Who would have expected to find me practicing an area of law I barely passed? Apparently, the interviewing partner at Koonz, McKenney & Johnson expected it, or maybe he just missed that part of my transcripts. Either way, I was eternally grateful for the opportunity. By the way, like most great law firms, they've since added 100 names to the name of the firm, but I refuse to list them as a matter of principle, and due to space limitations here.

I left law school with a little more confidence than I entered with, but I don't know why. Maybe seeing how the soup was made helped me to realize that you didn't have to be a law clerk to a justice of the Supreme Court to do well for yourself. In any event, my first stab and the practice was a very positive experience. I joined Koonz, McKenney & Johnson in January of 1986 as a law clerk, and worked part-time during the school year up to the date I took the bar examination. I passed the bar on the first try, which was amazing to me given my history on standardized tests, but I didn't stop to think about that long, because before the ink was dry on my last essay, the good folks at Koonz had already saddled me up with some of the best cases the firm was handling at the time. Anyone who has experience with being the new kid on the block in a law firm knows that senior partners always reserve a few gem cases for the new guy, and I got my share of these wonderful fixer uppers. Talking about being asked to make bricks without straw, the quality of some of these cases really made you question how a partner could become a senior partner by being silly enough to take some of these things in, but then I realized that the practice of law wasn't always about the money, but sometimes about public service. And, it was then that I realized that the senior partners were there to make the money while new associates were performing public service ( I know, I'm being really cynical here, and it's only in the spirit of jest that I raise this fictional phenonmenon).

Fortunately, I was not dependent on being fed cases from other partners very long. Because I spoke Spanish fluently, I was able to quickly establish myself in the Spanish speaking community, partially through my pro bono work during my Student Litigator days, and partially through participating in all kinds of organziations, and extracurricular community activities. The long of the short of it is that I was fortunate to become one of the youngest attorneys at the firm to turn a profit, and according one partner, the youngest attorney ever to secure a six figure verdict in a trial matter.

Wow, I was ready for the big time now! So, on September 28, 1989, I left Koonz less than two years after starting with them, and opened my own law firm. Having my own firm was great, until I realized that I was now responsible for making sure everyone had pencils, pens, pads, and law books, that the payroll was always paid on time, and that paying employees came before paying myself. But, after a few months (actually it was more like a year) of struggling, my first partner and I hit our stride and did quite well together. The firm grew from two to seven attorneys before I made my next move, which was to leave for an opportunity to work with a medium sized corporate law firm in Silver Spring, Maryland.

That move was bitter sweet. Sweet because it happened during a time when I was getting married to the only woman silly enough to have me (and she's still here for some reason I can't figure out), and bitter because the firm turned out to be a disaster. There were some great people at the firm, and I still keep in touch with a lot of the attorneys I met there, but frankly, the firm leadership was a little too ambitious on growth issues, and less effective at generating business to support all the attorneys. I saw the inevitable coming early enough that I was able to jump to a safe harbor, which turned out only to be a stepping stone to eventually starting my own practice again. If you ever want to know why small firms exist, go work for a 200 attorney law firm. There ought to be a law against allowing that many attorney to congregate in one place. I hated the experience, and decided to move on very quickly to something else.

After trying my hand at entrepreneurship, by establishing my own medical transcription company, which started off in promising fashion only to sink under the weight of excessive overhead, poor financial planning, and lack of market analysis (I goofed!) , I was quickly chased back into the comfortable surroundings of my own law firm, where I remained until approximately April of 2001, when I made the transition to teaching lawyers how to use technology to streamline their law practices. It worked so well for me I decided it was too good a secret to keep!

During my legal career, and especially as I made the transition out of the practice of law I learned a lot about marketing, and especially marketing with technology, both on and off the Web. I was very privileged to be taken under the wing of some very successful marketing experts who taught me many things about marketing, and who helped me achieve significant success in marketing my own business. Relationship marketing has always been a major focus of mine, but the addition of Internet marketing skills has allowed me to take it to new levels. Marketing is now a major interest for me, and teaching others what I know is one of my pleasures in life. I now devote a good portion of my time to teaching other small business owners how to effectively market their products and services, especially when they are on a budget.

Well, I hope my autobiography has been thoroughly entertaining for you. I'll end here by thanking you for being silly enough to still be reading about me!