Hi. My name’s Paul. And I’m glad to see you here on my blog. Let’s get the “official” bio out of the way:

“Paul Hoyt is an emerging writer presenting a fresh and unique perspective on topics relating to leadership, business, Christianity, and the logic of life. He is the founder and President of Connoisseur of Time, a successful luxury watch company, and has led his company to annual sales growth every year since inception. Prior to this Paul served as an executive for a training and consulting group. 

His writing is defined by its intelligence, thoughtfulness, authenticity, and common sense. 

Paul is a member of Mensa International and The Cerebrals Society, an international fellowship for those whose cognitive abilities have been assessed at or above 141 on professional psychometric scales, which is roughly 0.3% of people. 

Recently, IdeasDefine, a leading Atlanta-based branding consulting firm, named him one of the city’s social media experts and Awarding The Web ranked his blog Leading by Thinking  as one of the 2010 Top 40 Business Blogs on Leadership. Microsoft features Paul in their ExecTweets program as one of the top executives on Twitter.

He is insatiably curious and, besides his business and writing interests, has recently become an avid off-road motorcyclist. 

Paul currently resides outside of Atlanta, Georgia with his wife Brandi and their dog Audemars Piguet.”

Now on to my real story…

I was born in Lansing, Michigan in 1979. Until I was 2-years-old, my family lived in a fairly rough inner-city neighborhood while my father, who had just completed his doctorate in theology, worked on staff at the city’s largest church, and my mom was a housewife.

My father took a position as a senior pastor at a mid-sized church located in Romeo, Michigan, a suburb that was a bedroom community for Detroit and the metro areas auto plants. Our small town’s claim to fame is that it produced Bob Ritchie – better known as Kid Rock. Though we weren’t rich, I never felt poor as Dad also dealt profitably in vintage watches in his spare time. During my high school years I also discovered a hidden passion for understanding leadership and how to work with people. So I dropped out of playing competitive sports to focus my extra energy toward leading community service and ministry-type pursuits.

I attended a fairly small university in central Virginia where I rushed to finish my B.S. in Speech Communication in three years, chomping at the bit to get out into the real world. At the time I was actually planning on becoming a minister. Thankfully, I realized in my second year that with my skill-set I would make a REALLY lousy clergyman.

I first tasted the challenge of business in college, paying for the portion of tuition not covered by scholarships by selling antique watches on-line. This was back in the Beanie Baby days during the early e-commerce expansion.

Luckily, soon after graduating, my older brother heard of an opening with a company based in Atlanta that looked like it did interesting work, and I landed a job at The Duncan Group, an intellectual property based business that trained mortgage professionals in selling and business building. My first job title was Corporate Training Consultant – though really the day-to-day activities were calling people who often didn’t want to talk to me. Each morning I would go in and force myself to dial for dollars.

I learned a ton during my first few years there about establishing a service mentality in business. Also about intellectual property, value-added positioning, and how to make sure other people don’t steal your ketchup bottle  out of the refrigerator. But the most important lesson was of the pain brought on by working in an environment where I didn’t fit.

Enticed by the rapid advancement possible in a fairly small privately held company, I stayed five years and enjoyed several promotions, the last of which had me leading the company’s sales and marketing. I also met my wife during this time. Atlanta has been extremely good to me.

It didn’t take long before I realized that, though a few of the company’s underlying values fit mine, I was completely mismatched with the rest of the leadership’s day-to-day strategy and operating values. Thinking strategy consulting sounded fun I decided to pursue an MBA.

After spending way too many long hours sitting at the kitchen table brushing up on secant lines and indeterminate variables, I was lucky enough to score a 740 out of 800 on the entrance exam. I don’t think I could get that kind of score again if my life depended on it. Some scholarship offers came in from different schools and Notre Dame recruited me as a priority candidate for their Henry F. Frigon Fellowship for Business Excellence. To keep  from going crazy during the day-long study sessions, I had resurrected the business that paid my way through school once already and started test marketing different types of watches online.

At the time I was determined to only apply to the three top-ranked business schools in the U.S. and to Yale. If I didn’t get in, then I wasn’t going to go – how’s that for hubris? Fortunately, apparently due to my non-traditional background, they all turned me down. At the time I was hurt. But it’s one of the best things that happened to me as it sealed my fate as a bootstrapping small business owner.

Over the last four years, with the help of a great team, I have been privileged to grow my business into one of the higher margin volume selling companies in our business space. I figure if I define “my business space” small enough I can’t lose.

Currently, I’m the President of Connoisseur of Time, a luxury watch company, husband, newbie author, father to a seriously over-caffeinated Jack Russell terrier, and recent addict to off-road motorcycling.

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