ARGENTVOLUTION

A warehouse clerk with only a high school education doesn't normally wind up negotiating in Hong Kong with a $50 million budget.

A ski instructor doesn't normally build an international sourcing company.

A buyer doesn't normally become Director of Marketing during the ColecoVision, Donkey Kong, and Cabbage Patch Kids explosion.

A guy without a university degree doesn't normally build educational software, artificial intelligence learning systems, CD-ROM businesses, database companies, boat dealerships, marketing companies, and then write a memoir about it.
One person doesn't normally do any of these things, let alone all of them.

Yet somehow, that's exactly what happened to me and what I did.

Looking back, it makes about as much sense as a silver ball ricocheting around a pinball machine.
One collision changes everything.

A warehouse strike unexpectedly launches a career in merchandising.
A buying job becomes a passport to Asia.
A business trip becomes an international company.
A setback becomes a new opportunity.
A technological revolution opens a door nobody even knew existed a few years earlier.

At the time, none of it seemed extraordinary. I was simply trying to solve the next problem, close the next deal, make payroll, support my family, and figure out what came next. Only later did I realize I had spent much of my life standing where the future was arriving first.

I witnessed the transformation of retailing from manual systems to computerized systems. I watched global sourcing reshape world commerce. I participated in the rise of personal computing, educational software, multimedia, artificial intelligence, and lifelong learning.

Not as an observer. As a participant. As someone fortunate enough-or foolish enough-to keep saying yes when opportunity knocked.

Some of those opportunities worked out spectacularly. Others blew up in my face. There were victories I never expected.
There were failures I never saw coming. There were fortunes made, fortunes lost, relationships built, relationships broken, and more than a few moments when common sense suggested I should probably quit.

Fortunately, common sense has never been my strongest attribute. What kept me going was curiosity.
The belief that there had to be another way. Another opportunity. Another chapter. Another ball to launch.

ARGENTVOLUTION is not the story of a perfect life, it's the story of an interesting one.
A story about reinvention, resilience, lifelong learning, entrepreneurship, family, technology, marketing, risk-taking, and the remarkable places life can take you when you're willing to follow opportunity into the unknown.

Part business case study. Part memoir. Part family saga. Part living history. Most of all, it is proof that life's hardest hits do not have to define you. They can redirect you. And sometimes that new direction turns out to be far more interesting than the one you originally planned. Because the game isn't over when the ball drains.

You pull the plunger.
Launch another one.
And keep playing.

The Memoir of a Pinball Wizard
Charles de Martigny