Curriculum Vitae of Founder John “Sebastian” Ragazzo
The founder of Offer in Compromise has been a successful negotiator since the mid 80’s. As an aggressive east-coaster, John Sebastian Ragazzo was born in New York, and raised in New Jersey. By the age of 18, Sebastian had amassed $100,000 in savings, which was derived mostly from accumulated referral fees and commissions. His best moneymaking technique was negotiating against auto dealerships on behalf of car buyers throughout New York and New Jersey. Sebastian learned from the get-go that you never have a second chance to make a first impression, and so he has always placed his best foot forward.
In 1985, Sebastian relocated to California to grow his auto referral business. Almost immediately, Sebastian nurtured a relationship with the operators of major auto dealerships throughout southern California. Eventually, Sebastian found a niche to unite car buyers and Southern California auto dealerships, not by advertising, but through advertising. Sebastian created his own unique vehicle for bringing buyers and sellers together by creating the Auto Directory Magazine.
.
Sebastian realized that the dilemma was not necessarily what buyers were looking to buy, but whom they were looking to buy from. Hence… the Auto Directory was born.
The Auto Directory was initially introduced as a free-of-charge, black and white newspaper-type publication. It grew into a 190+ page full-color, glossy magazine, introducing auto buyers to auto sellers. The Auto Directory presented to its readers a unique auto-selling strategy, coupled with auto-buying experiences.
Rather than inviting auto dealers to advertise within the publication, Sebastian, armed with writers and a full camera crew, would [personally] go out and visit auto dealers, and photograph auto dealership showrooms, service and parts departments. He would collect information and publish full page reviews incorporating every aspect about the dealerships services, and convey to buyers why they would want to purchase their next new car from a particular dealership.
The Auto Directory even incorporated a consumer feedback questionnaire which invited consumers to provide their feedback on a particular auto dealership car buying experience.
The Auto Directory’s published opinions were unbiased, and no auto dealership could ever purchase a review within the Auto Directory.
Any business that wished to advertise within the Auto Directory was qualified by the Auto Directory’s staff, pulling business licenses, and investigating consumer complaints lodged with local Better Business Bureaus. If and when a merchant passed a preliminary screening, staff members of the Auto Directory would create and publish a combination of an editorial, identifying the most important highlights of the merchant, coupled with a brief advertisement. Hence, the winning combination created an advertorial. In 1992, Sebastian appeared on the front cover of Automotive Outlook.
.
Then came Karmac… the mall kiosk that Sebastian designed to provide car buyers with a user-friendly automated experience. He created a friendly character named Karmac who would guide car buyers with an interactive kiosk to help narrow down the vast selection of automobiles. Upon completion of the session, Karmac would provide a hot-off-the-press edition of the Auto Directory magazine.
In fact, when cellphones were first invented, Sebastian figured out a way to fit that huge, bulky phone into a briefcase, so it was less conspicuous. Hence, he created and manufactured the very first briefcase cell phone.
.
By 1988, Sebastian began [personally] fueling a private-labeled automobile dealership credit card to assist auto dealerships with increased customer retention and loyalty.
Sebastian’s appeared on the front cover of Entrepreneur, a high profile magazine that illuminated successful entrepreneurs.
.
The Service Express card was then introduced to car buyers at the time of purchase of their new automobile. Since banks only approved car purchases based upon a limited credit amount, the Service Express credit card invited car buyers to purchase aftermarket accessories, like a sun roof, or the opportunity to upgrade their tires and rims, and even purchase extended warranties.
The Service Express credit card incorporated each specific auto dealership’s name on the card, and the card could only be used at that particular dealership. However, rather than attempt to sell the Service Express credit card concept to the auto dealerships door-to-door, Sebastian advertised the Service Express card within his own Auto Directory publication.
This strategy prompted auto dealerships to contact Service Express directly, and invited them to integrate the Service Express credit card program at their dealership. Within twelve short months, Service Express Card applications were found throughout automobile dealerships across the entire United States.
By 1990, the participating lender purchased controlling interest of the Service Express program, and eventually acquired the entire operation.
Sebastian pursued his lifelong vision, and set out to design his own line of clothing. He manufactured overseas and branded his own label.
By 1997, Sebastian had opened his own clothing boutiques, selling his own (very) popular clothing lines within his boutiques.
Carefully plotting a unique retail sales plan, Sebastian appeared on the front cover of Metropolitan magazine, echoing his plan to set out and attract the most relaxed buyers into any one of his twenty-two Geneva of Beverly Hills Boutique locations… tourists.
Under the brand (and his last name) Ragazzo (meaning “boy” in Italian) and Ragazza (meaning “Girl” in Italian), Sebastian introduced his top-selling 3-piece washable silk walking suit Collection to the United States, consisting of a fashionable jacket, pants, and matching shorts. Sebastian sold the collections throughout his Boutiques.
Other product inventions and designs that Sebastian spearheaded or shared in its success includes the E-Tak Navigation system, a uniquely designed Tracking System that guided driver’s door-to-door, safely landing them at their final destination.
At the time, the highest level of technology available provided only county by county mapping elements of this tracking system to be created and stored on multiple cassette tapes.
By incorporating today’s modern technological advancements, E-Tak was acquired by General Motors, and has since been redesigned and licensed to automotive manufactures throughout the world, conveniently and optionally integrated into the dashboard of all new cars. The mapping elements have since been upgraded with today’s latest technology, and the entire country’s maps are now retained on a single CD ROM.
Sebastian’s business ventures continued with the development of a 900 telephone hotline system, which allowed callers to retrieve instant medical information, and the opportunity to speak directly with Physician Assistants to aid in their medical ailments.
Health Fone Care was manned by Physician Assistants and accessible to caller’s 24-hours a day. First-time callers received by mail, a free brochure to help guide them through an array of medical topics, and telephone assistance during their next calls to Health Fone Care. Callers were also received a magnet to be placed onto their refrigerator door to conveniently remind callers of the 900 telephone number to call, and the extensions to each medical topic. Most importantly, Health Fone Care helped minimize unnecessary trips to hospitals, emergency rooms and medical centers. Eventually a major health care provider acquired Health Fone Care’s to help reduce unnecessary insurance claims.
Onward… When you are at a lunch meeting, have you ever wished you could exchange notes with everyone at the table so you didn’t have to wait for your copy to come by mail? Introducing… the KopyKat Notepad.
This uniquely-designed, multiple carbonless copy notepad allows users to inscribe (up to) six multiple (original) copies at the time of the actual inscriptions. An International Patent License ensued and was granted in 1991.
The KopyKat notepad was eventually licensed to a major paper products distributor, who acquired them shortly thereafter.
This leads us to Offer in Compromise.
Sebastian lives by one motto… “Opportunity lends itself.” Each venture that Sebastian evolves with opens new adventurous doors to bolder, more creative and lucrative opportunities. Sebastian is an achiever; a motivator; a leader; and an inspiration to his followers. This isn’t to say that Sebastian is perfect. He cautiously shares his missteps with his ginormous team of nationwide negotiators, to ensure that his mistakes are never emulated. Sebastian is best known as a go-to guy to all of his clients; associates; and friends. Sebastian certainly makes many friends along the way. He glides through life with a perception that everyone wishes to achieve what they set out to accomplish. His charisma energizes and marries enemies, and he cherishes his ever-expanding portfolio of successful ventures, and newly-created friends along his journeys.
There are countless other business ventures that have propelled Sebastian’s career, including his team’s successful negotiations of large ticket purchase items; renegotiation of professional athlete contracts; and merges and acquisition.
In 2010, Sebastian was inducted into the California Frontrunner business magazine, voting him #7 of the top 50 smartest people in business.
SO where is Sebastian headed now? Introducing the long anticipated Plastic Coupon.
Ecologically speaking… the entire world is finally going green. Imagine how many trees would be saved if we put an end to coupon mailers? Nowadays, we practically pull a tree out of our mailboxes every day. It’s junk mail; we don’t ask for it; we don’t want it; it’s a waste of retailer’s money; and the process is destroying our forests! Everyone appears to be going paperless… so why not paperless coupons? Retailers anxiously create; design; print; postmark; and bulk-mail paper coupons to millions of customers. Those coupons offer various discounts if they are presented by or before a certain date. When those coupons expire, they become worthless volumes of useless, wasted paper.
PlasticCoupon is in the process of placing a period on such time consuming; costly, and wasteful practices by creating an instant-gratification, and cost-productive way of reaching millions of shoppers, through their wallets, not their mailboxes. And while we certainly agree that coupons are somewhat effective, grasping at a two-percent average mailer return hardly seems worth the slaughter of so many of our precious trees, for such a minimal expectation. PlasticCoupon will soon be enrolling retailers into the PlasticCoupon program. Our portfolio of retailers will join our mission, converting their mailer coupons from paper to plastic.
In a world bursting at the seams with coupon incentives; cash back rewards and fine-print come-on’s, none offer the true incentive of instant gratification, like the PlasticCoupon.
While the PlasticCoupon is a discount club-membership card and not a credit card, the PlasticCoupon will revolutionize the way retailers reach out to, and reward their shoppers.
The mission of Plastic Coupon is to help save trees by providing shoppers with a PlasticCoupon that never expires, and will forever remain in shopper’s wallets, not in their trash cans like unwanted, expired paper coupons. Soon, PlasticCoupon cardholders will be able to visit their favorite retailers, swipe their PlasticCoupon at the register, and receive whatever instant gratification that paper coupons were intended to offer its shoppers.
Be sure to look for the Plastic Coupon’s new beginnings as they progress with high hopes, and even greater expectations.
You are invited to surf our website, e-mail or call whenever you are ever in need of a personal negotiator on your side, seeking a profitable resolution.
Hi there! I understand this is kind of off-topic however I had to ask. Does managing a well-established website like yours take a large amount of work? I am completely new to operating a blog however I do write in my diary every day. I’d like to start a blog so I can easily share my experience and views online. Please let me know if you have any kind of ideas or tips for brand new aspiring blog owners. Thankyou!
Awesome blog! Is your theme custom made or did you download it from somewhere? A theme like yours with a few simple tweeks would really make my blog shine. Please let me know where you got your theme. Many thanks
Hello just wanted to give you a quick heads up. The text in your post seem to be running off the screen in Chrome. I’m not sure if this is a formatting issue or something to do with browser compatibility but I thought I’d post to let you know. The layout look great though! Hope you get the problem fixed soon. Many thanks
Good day! I know this is kinda off topic however , I’d figured I’d ask. Would you be interested in exchanging links or maybe guest authoring a blog article or vice-versa? My site covers a lot of the same topics as yours and I feel we could greatly benefit from each other. If you happen to be interested feel free to send me an email. I look forward to hearing from you! Awesome blog by the way!
It’s a shame you don’t have a donate button! I’d certainly donate to this excellent blog! I suppose for now i’ll settle for book-marking and adding your RSS feed to my Google account. I look forward to brand new updates and will share this blog with my Facebook group. Talk soon!
Today, I went to the beach with my children. I found a sea shell and gave it to my 4 year old daughter and said “You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear.” She put the shell to her ear and screamed. There was a hermit crab inside and it pinched her ear. She never wants to go back! LoL I know this is totally off topic but I had to tell someone!
Howdy! I’m at work browsing your blog from my new iphone! Just wanted to say I love reading your blog and look forward to all your posts! Keep up the fantastic work!
Hey there! Do you know if they make any plugins to protect against hackers? I’m kinda paranoid about losing everything I’ve worked hard on. Any recommendations?
Good day I am so thrilled I found your web site, I really found you by error, while I was searching on Bing for something else, Regardless I am here now and would just like to say kudos for a remarkable post and a all round interesting blog (I also love the theme/design), I don’t have time to go through it all at the minute but I have book-marked it and also included your RSS feeds, so when I have time I will be back to read more, Please do keep up the fantastic work.
I don’t know if it’s just me or if perhaps everybody else experiencing issues with your blog. It appears as though some of the written text in your content are running off the screen. Can somebody else please provide feedback and let me know if this is happening to them as well? This could be a issue with my browser because I’ve had this happen previously. Cheers
Greetings! I’ve been reading your website for a long time now and finally got the bravery to go ahead and give you a shout out from Kingwood Tx! Just wanted to say keep up the fantastic work!
Hello, I think your site might be having browser compatibility issues. When I look at your website in Chrome, it looks fine but when opening in Internet Explorer, it has some overlapping. I just wanted to give you a quick heads up! Other then that, awesome blog!
I know this if off topic but I’m looking into starting my own weblog and was wondering what all is required to get set up? I’m assuming having a blog like yours would cost a pretty penny? I’m not very web smart so I’m not 100% positive. Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks
Good day! This is my 1st comment here so I just wanted to give a quick shout out and tell you I genuinely enjoy reading through your posts. Can you suggest any other blogs/websites/forums that cover the same subjects? Many thanks!
Hello there! I could have sworn I’ve been to this website before but after reading through some of the post I realized it’s new to me. Anyways, I’m definitely glad I found it and I’ll be bookmarking and checking back often!
Do you have a spam issue on this site; I also am a blogger, and I was wondering your situation; we have created some nice procedures and we are looking to exchange techniques with others, be sure to shoot me an email if interested.
Wonderful blog! I found it while surfing around on Yahoo News. Do you have any suggestions on how to get listed in Yahoo News? I’ve been trying for a while but I never seem to get there! Thank you
Wow that was odd. I just wrote an very long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn’t appear. Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again. Anyways, just wanted to say great blog!
It’s a shame you don’t have a donate button! I’d most certainly donate to this brilliant blog! I suppose for now i’ll settle for book-marking and adding your RSS feed to my Google account. I look forward to fresh updates and will talk about this blog with my Facebook group. Chat soon!
Terrific post however , I was wondering if you could write a litte more on this subject? I’d be very grateful if you could elaborate a little bit more. Cheers!
Hey! I know this is kinda off topic but I was wondering if you knew where I could get a captcha plugin for my comment form? I’m using the same blog platform as yours and I’m having trouble finding one? Thanks a lot!
First of all I want to say great blog! I had a quick question in which I’d like to ask if you do not mind. I was interested to find out how you center yourself and clear your head prior to writing. I’ve had a tough time clearing my thoughts in getting my thoughts out. I truly do enjoy writing but it just seems like the first 10 to 15 minutes are usually wasted just trying to figure out how to begin. Any ideas or tips? Many thanks!
Amazing! This blog looks exactly like my old one! It’s on a completely different subject but it has pretty much the same page layout and design. Excellent choice of colors!
Hello! I just wanted to ask if you ever have any trouble with hackers? My last blog (wordpress) was hacked and I ended up losing months of hard work due to no backup. Do you have any methods to protect against hackers?
http://thetshirtspot713.com/welcome-to-flatsome-an-amazing-responsive-and-retina-ready-theme/
Appreciating the commitment you put into your blog and detailed information you provide. It’s nice to come across a blog every once in a while that isn’t the same unwanted rehashed information. Great read! I’ve bookmarked your site and I’m including your RSS feeds to my Google account.
I’m not sure exactly why but this web site is loading incredibly slow for me. Is anyone else having this issue or is it a problem on my end? I’ll check back later on and see if the problem still exists.
I’m really enjoying the theme/design of your site. Do you ever run into any internet browser compatibility issues? A small number of my blog readers have complained about my blog not working correctly in Explorer but looks great in Safari. Do you have any advice to help fix this issue?
Howdy! Do you know if they make any plugins to assist with Search Engine Optimization? I’m trying to get my blog to rank for some targeted keywords but I’m not seeing very good gains. If you know of any please share. Thanks!
Exceptional post but I was wondering if you could write a litte more on this topic? I’d be very grateful if you could elaborate a little bit more. Kudos!
Hi there are using WordPress for your blog platform? I’m new to the blog world but I’m trying to get started and set up my own. Do you require any html coding expertise to make your own blog? Any help would be really appreciated!
My spouse and I stumbled over here by a different website and thought I might check things out. I like what I see so now i’m following you. Look forward to checking out your web page repeatedly.
Right now it seems like WordPress is the preferred blogging platform out there right now. (from what I’ve read) Is that what you are using on your blog?
Hi! I understand this is somewhat off-topic but I had to ask. Does managing a well-established blog like yours take a lot of work? I am brand new to writing a blog but I do write in my diary everyday. I’d like to start a blog so I will be able to share my experience and thoughts online. Please let me know if you have any kind of recommendations or tips for new aspiring blog owners. Appreciate it!
http://www.iecext.com/vino/vino-europa/mercado-nacional/2013/02/1731/
Wow that was odd. I just wrote an extremely long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn’t appear. Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again. Anyway, just wanted to say great blog!
Good day! I could have sworn I’ve been to this website before but after checking through some of the post I realized it’s new to me. Anyhow, I’m definitely happy I found it and I’ll be bookmarking and checking back often!
Hi there would you mind stating which blog platform you’re working with? I’m going to start my own blog soon but I’m having a tough time deciding between BlogEngine/Wordpress/B2evolution and Drupal. The reason I ask is because your design and style seems different then most blogs and I’m looking for something completely unique. P.S My apologies for getting off-topic but I had to ask!
Superb website you have here but I was curious if you knew of any forums that cover the same topics talked about here? I’d really love to be a part of group where I can get feedback from other knowledgeable people that share the same interest. If you have any suggestions, please let me know. Appreciate it!
Hmm it seems like your site ate my first comment (it was extremely long) so I guess I’ll just sum it up what I had written and say, I’m thoroughly enjoying your blog. I too am an aspiring blog blogger but I’m still new to everything. Do you have any recommendations for rookie blog writers? I’d certainly appreciate it.
I am curious to find out what blog platform you are utilizing? I’m experiencing some small security issues with my latest site and I would like to find something more risk-free. Do you have any suggestions?
Hi there! Do you use Twitter? I’d like to follow you if that would be ok. I’m definitely enjoying your blog and look forward to new posts.
This design is steller! You obviously know how to keep a reader entertained. Between your wit and your videos, I was almost moved to start my own blog (well, almost…HaHa!) Great job. I really enjoyed what you had to say, and more than that, how you presented it. Too cool!
Very good blog! Do you have any tips for aspiring writers? I’m hoping to start my own site soon but I’m a little lost on everything. Would you suggest starting with a free platform like WordPress or go for a paid option? There are so many choices out there that I’m completely overwhelmed .. Any ideas? Thanks!
Wonderful blog! Do you have any recommendations for aspiring writers? I’m hoping to start my own website soon but I’m a little lost on everything. Would you suggest starting with a free platform like WordPress or go for a paid option? There are so many options out there that I’m totally overwhelmed .. Any suggestions? Kudos!
http://blogincognito.com/2013/11/26/fico-ou-volto/
http://thefouronesix.ca/uncategorized/1-year-anniversary/
I just want to say I am very new to blogging and site-building and definitely savored your web page. More than likely I’m likely to bookmark your blog . You definitely have really good articles and reviews. Thanks a bunch for sharing with us your web-site.
Wow that was unusual. I just wrote an extremely long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn’t show up. Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again. Regardless, just wanted to say great blog!
Please let me know if you’re looking for a article writer for your blog. You have some really great articles and I believe I would be a good asset. If you ever want to take some of the load off, I’d absolutely love to write some content for your blog in exchange for a link back to mine. Please shoot me an e-mail if interested. Regards!