Back Matter: 36 Things You May Not Know about Robert Villegas

36 Things You May Not Know about Robert Villegas

·       When I worked in London, I met and dated a young lady who was beginning her acting career. She is now an internationally renowned actress with plenty of movie and television credits.

·       When I was fifteen years old, I pitched a no-hitter in organized baseball.

·       During a 2-year period, I played on a team that won a City Championship and was a State Runner-up.

·       In 2016, my son Roberto was involved in a promotion, and he took me along while he drove the 2016 Indy 500 Pace Car around the IMS track. We didn’t go slow.

·       Thus far in my life, I have attended 66 Indy 500s and numerous other races in Phoenix, Mid-Ohio, Birmingham, Michigan, and the 2009 Daytona 500, as well as Formula 2000, NHRA, ARCA, USAC, NASCAR, and several Formula 1 races.

·       I have a cousin who is a famous guitarist and electronics expert who once played at a White House Christmas party where he accompanied Bill Clinton who played the saxophone. My cousin has been the lead guitarist for Garth Brooks and Tricia Yearwood (to whom he introduced me).

·       I have written hundreds of sponsorship proposals for entertainers, athletes in a variety of sports, race car drivers, race teams, event promoters and celebrity agents.

·       I have written over 260 Business Plans for startups that helped them obtain financing for their companies.

·       I have worked in Miami, Delray Beach, FL, New York City, Boston, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Sacramento, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Indianapolis, Dallas, Tampa, Trinidad and Tobago, Orlando, Chicago, Frankfurt, Germany, Munich, Germany, Dusseldorf, Germany, Madrid, Spain, London, England, Barcelona, Spain, Toronto, On, Canada, Vancouver BC, Canada,. Cities visited include West Palm Beach, Los Angeles, San Diego, Dallas, Houston, Austin, Tucson, Plymouth Rock, Washington DC, Newark, Kansas City, Springfield, IL, Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone National Park, and Albuquerque, Grand Canyon, Denver, Salt Lake City.

·       As a Call Center Manager, I simplified an hours long process for department staffing (that was previously done on paper), and created a computerized Gannt Chart using Lotus 123. I informed corporate of my success with the process and told them I had improved call center calling efficiency and shaved hours off the process of staffing the department. A member of the corporate team came to visit me to observe the efficiency of the spreadsheet. He took a copy of it back to corporate where they converted the spreadsheet to a computer program. Once the program was distributed to call centers around the country, it began to save UPS millions of dollars and liberated supervisors to concentrate on improving other aspects of their call centers.

·       When I was the district telecommunications manager at UPS Indiana, I was presented by our communications provider with what was then the new digital texting pagers. I informed my boss of this product and suggested that we could improve service quality by giving a pager to strategically placed drivers and do emergency pickups and solve other problems by setting up a network using these digital pagers. I received approval to proceed, and we bought several pagers and keyboards that could be used to type out text messages. I set up the system and the driver supervisors who were charged with using the devices gave it high marks. I informed corporate about what I was doing and asked the team leader if he wanted to see them in use. In a few days, he came to visit me, and I showed him the system. He asked me if I could set up a meeting with the telecom company that was selling the pagers. He told me that he was involved in a project that needed a networked communications service.

·       I set up the meeting, and we visited the company with questions based on what it would take to use their network to communicate with some devices that UPS was pioneering. We learned that the network, being new, had lots of dead space that could be seamlessly used for such a communication system. The corporate team member thanked me for letting him know about what I was doing and that I had just helped UPS speed up their development project to help drivers on their routes.

·       In a few months the first digital clipboard was introduced to our system so that all package deliveries, signatures, etc., could be recorded on computerized clipboards which significantly improved our service for delivery, package tracking and record keeping for package tracing that could be accessed by means of computers. Later bar codes were introduced and integrated into this new system which improved our service even more – this made it possible for customers to track package on their desktop computers via the Internet.

·       While in Germany, I informed my boss that I could create an automated computerized complain processing system. In a few days, the call center had a full-fledged complaint processing subsection.

·       While in Germany, I was asked to create the work processes for a Same Day Pickup Service in the three German districts. I researched the requirements, identified the business processes and wrote a proposal detailing how the service could be accomplished. This happened as I was preparing to leave the country at the conclusion of my assignment. I don’t know if my plan was implemented.

·       Over my career, I have worked in Canada, South Korea, England, Spain, Germany, and the United States.

·       While on assignment in Europe, I designed the interfaces for the German, England, Spanish, and Singapore Call Centers. These programs were in the German language, Spanish language, and English.

·       When I was working in Europe, I had the opportunity to vacation in Berlin and visit the museum in Berlin that housed the famous bust of Nefertiti. I also saw artifacts that depicted both Akhenaten and Nefertiti together and separately. It was one of the greatest weeks of my life. I also chipped pieces off of the Berlin wall and was able to walk around East Berlin that had already been liberated by Gorbachev. I visited the location where John F. Kennedy gave his speech “Ich bin Ein Berliner” which means “I am a jellyroll”.

·       When I worked in London I took the opportunity to spend several days at the British Museum. There I saw many of the things I had watched on television including Egyptian mummies, large monuments and Greek statues. One of the most interesting things I saw was the Rosetta Stone that is a large black slab of carved stone found in Egypt many years ago. It was the Rosetta Stone that helped Jean-François Champollion decipher Egyptian Hieroglyphic for the first time in modern history. The Stone was written in three scripts, hieroglyphics, Coptic, and Greek.

·       When I went to the Indy Car race in Cleveland, I had the opportunity to meet and have dinner with Mexican driver Adrian Fernandez. During practice later in Mid-Ohio, I was able to watch the practice action from the pits. Later in Michigan my son and I hung out with him in the Galles hospitality area, and I got some great pictures of them.

·       Also, on my trip to Cleveland, I met with Jimmy Vassar and his car owner about their funding needs. That evening, Jimmy was our chauffeur who drove us around to several night clubs. We learned after several “close calls” that he didn’t have a driver’s license.

·       My father’s cousin was Dimas de Leon who was a brother or cousin of my grandmother. He invited my mother and father to have dinner with him in his mansion in Mexico. He was known as the “Al Capone of Mexico” and there have been numerous songs written about him and a feature film. You could call him a real-life anti-hero.

·       While in Europe, I got into my Audi and drove through five countries in one day. I started in Germany, drove to France, then Belgium, crossed Luxembourg, then drove to the Netherlands before going home.

·       Over the course of my travels, I have seen two Leonardo da Vinci paintings, one in The Prado in Madrid and one in Washington DC.

·       When I worked in England I happened to be there during “Trooping of the Colors” when I saw the Royal Family, Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles, Princess Diana, the two boys, the Queen Mother, Prince Phillip and Prince Andrew.

·       I once traveled to Boston’s Ford Hall Forum and saw Ayn Rand speak in person. It was an important day in my life.

·       On another visit to Boston, I attended a party and met Dr. Leonard Peikoff, Ayn Rand’s associate and student.

·       Once, while in Germany I drove on the Autobahn at 140 KPH.

·       When in England, I took a bus tour to Stonehenge and Bath, England. I saw the famous Roman baths that are still there and also saw the famous circular buildings in the town of Bath.

·       In 1990, I took a vacation in West Berlin and saw the Berlin Wall that was still coming down at the time. I saw the Brandenburg Gate that was being renovated at the time. On the day that I went to East Berlin, I saw the famous Marx and Engels statues and took pictures of the Parliament building in the background. As I recall, the German Nazi headquarters building was in the area, but it was forbidden to go into the area. On that day the East and West Parliaments were meeting and the day of Reunification of the two Germany’s was decided.

·       Later, when that day came that the two Germany’s were now one nation, I went to the Opera House in Frankfurt and drank champagne with young German people who were all over the streets celebrating the great day when communist Germany had merged with capitalist Germany.

·       Over my career in motorsport marketing, I worked for 2 Indy 500 winners, one a car owner and the other a driver.

·       At twelve years of age, I saw the 1958 16-car crash at the beginning of the Indy 500. Later, my brothers and I were standing near the scaffold that fell at the start of the race.

·       While I worked in Munich, Germany, I had the opportunity to attend Octoberfest.

·       I have written 128 books and counting – I have never had the problem of laziness or writer’s block.

·       Three of the major accomplishments of my writing are 1) discovery of the concept of “moral triangulation”, 2) “Robert’s Razor” and 3)“Freedom of Philosophy”.

To learn about Robert Villegas’ Books go to Amazon https://amzn.to/3UykPrj