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Who's who: Sam Jonas
The first chapter of Sam Jonas' professional bio might be called 'How the West Was Won,' as Jonas first found success placing ATMs in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and other areas largely ignored by others. After founding an advertising company called ConvenienTV, Jonas hopes a later chapter will be entitled 'ATM Advertising Works.'
January 24, 2002
Sam Jonas' position as an innovator in the ATM industry and a trailblazer for ATM advertising is surprising only to those who haven't met him. Jonas is a born salesman, able to control conversation with intelligence and wit, whether he's facing a boardroom full of executives or a wily convenience store proprietor at a Montana outpost.
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The fact that Jonas got such a slow start in his professional life may partly explain his hurried pace and the hours the 42-year-old entrepreneur devotes to leading two companies. He is founder and president of both Cash Resources, a $25 million-a-year ISO, and ConvenienTV, a fledgling advertising company.
"I used to be a night owl," Jonas explains, conducting a phone interview from his Colorado office at about 6 a.m. Mountain time. "Then I said, 'If I'm going to work, I have to do it in the morning.' It's the best time to get things done. Once the phone starts ringing, it gets chaotic."
Keeping up with Jonas requires an open mind, nimble feet and willingness to rise early, according to Alfie Pena, a Cash Resources sales manager for four years. Jonas and Pena have early morning discussions so frequently, they've coined a term for them.
"It's a lifestyle with Sam," says Pena, who had worked for a competitor before signing on with Jonas. "He burns that candle every way he can with long hours. We have a saying that we'll talk at the crack of crack. If I want my time with Sam, I'm up at the crack of crack. I've had voice mail at 3:45 in the morning."
Sam Jonas |
Jonas' candle burning has paid off for Cash Resources, the ISO he started in 1993 and which now has 2,700 ATMs under contract in 44 states. Revenues for the 26-employee company have nearly doubled every year since 1996.
Jonas started a second company, ConvenienTV, in 1999 with the idea of promoting video advertising on screens attached to ATMs and hanging above the checkout lanes in retail locations. That company currently has seven employees and 450 sites operating in Chicago, Denver and Phoenix.
Future vision
Jonas thinks advances in technology and advertisers' need to infiltrate their customers' increasingly busy lives will push ATM advertising into the mainstream.
"A lot of things clearly indicate this medium's time is coming," he explains, rifling through evidence from tests and his own observations. "We've seen media companies get it. They've had their audience in decline for 20 years. Agencies haven't come around yet."
Among those who admire Jonas' efforts in pushing ATM advertising are Ernest Burdette, the mild-mannered president of ATM manufacturer Triton Systems. Near opposites in personality, the two ATM leaders clearly respect each other's business acumen.
"Sam has been the point man for the industry and is fulfilling an important role," says Burdette. "With ConvenienTV, he's way ahead of most of the pack and, in this business, that's an advantage."
Burdette, who has known Jonas since Cash Resources became a Triton distributor in the mid-'90s, believes Jonas will continue to be successful because of his gregarious nature and leadership skills.
"Everybody who knows him would say he's high-energy, and he's one of the most intellectual of the people I work with in this industry," Burdette says. "He has the ability to take his business where it needs to go. He figures out a way to get there and doesn't get bogged down on issues."
Slow start
Apparently, Jonas wasn't always possessed of such drive and determination. The son of a carpet salesman from Brooklyn (and ultimately owner of his own mill in Georgia), Jonas grew up in the South, went to high school in Atlanta, then embarked on a 12-year odyssey of odd jobs and education that ended when he earned a degree in history from the University of Florida. He says he spent much of that time working in restaurants, painting houses and yes, digging ditches.
That Jonas became an ATM mogul can be traced directly to his love life rather than his own ambition. "In 1990 I was dating a girl who was transferred to Seattle, and she asked me to go," he explains.
That girl, Carol, later became his wife and the mother of a daughter, now 10, and a five-year-old son.
Jonas became a sales manager for a check collection agency, where he says he learned a lot about dealing with merchants. In two years, Carol asked him to move again so she could accept a promotion in Missoula, Mont.
It was there his entrepreneurial spirit took flight. "I saw my first scrip machine in a bowling alley in Seattle literally weeks before we left for Montana, and I said 'I want to sell those' " he says.
In 1993, after seeing a Tidel ATM at a Montana truck stop, he became a distributor and began practicing what he came to call his "freeway strategy," which brought ATMs to hundreds of freeway exits in Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho and the Dakotas.
"We got lucky because it was an area others weren't interested in," Jonas says. "They ignored it. We took new technologies and brought them into rural areas."
Jonas even placed an ATM in Lincoln, Mont., home of noted non-technology fan Ted Kaczynski (otherwise known as the Unabomber).
Jonas makes no secret of his fascination with technology, expressing childlike wonder at the prospect of what will be possible in the future. That's why he's so optimistic that eventually ATM advertising will find a place in the mainstream of agency advertising buys.
"I remember seeing a TV above an ATM at NACS (a convenience store trade show) in 1995 and saying that was cool. The technology wasn't mature then," he says. "Now it reminds me of ATMs nine years ago, as technology pushed ATMs for high growth. I see the same pattern emerging now (with ATM advertising)."
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