Jeff Einstein

Professional Outlier

I’m a faith-based father, husband, sibling, and friend. Also a widely published author, speaker, producer, and digital media pioneer long ago turned digital apostate. College-free, I describe my four-year high school career as the best eight days of my life. Chased out of two different countries by two different military conscriptions (back in the early 1970s when I still had one good knee) with a history of layovers at airports that lasted longer than most of my corporate jobs.

Perhaps because I've never entertained an actual career ambition, my professional life unfolded over the years as a series of accidental but prophetic firsts, starting with Einstein's Computer Guides, the first major how-to book series on personal computers, and Einstein and Sandom Inc., the nation’s first digital advertising agency — both way back in 1984/85. Then came Room Service Hawaii, the nation’s first home-away-from-home cable shopping channel in the early 1990s. Returned to NYC for the Dot Com madness where — ensconced like an outsized Yoda at rooftop designer vodka parties — I introduced Smart Syndication, the first ecommerce syndication network.

The New York Times referred to me in the early 21st century as the Mick Jagger of digital media. Seemed to bear a faint resemblance to a compliment at the time, but now I think it was because — like Mick Jagger — I was the only butt-ugly old coot in an industry full of good looking young hipsters.

I went from digital media pioneer to digital apostate in 2004 — some years before Youtube and Netflix and Facebook and smartphones ruled the world — when I was the first to step out and warn against the rise of what we all recognize now as a default meta-addiction to all things media and all things digital. Addiction, I claimed, had emerged as the new rule rather than the exception. Hardly a surprise now or then that my digital career nose-dived like a kamikaze.

Looking back, my history of accidental but prophetic firsts seems like a perfectly natural progression for a semi-competent guy with way too much spare time on his hands and a litany of former drug habits to support. Now — firmly ensconced in my 70s — I’ve lost enough people I love, survived enough close encounters with my own mortality, and compiled enough regrets to understand finally how to prioritize my time and talents. Better late than never.