About the Founder

Jim Johnson - President/CEO
Business Bridges

Toll Free: 1-866-898-8429
Fax: (480) 247-5115


E-mail: jajohnson@businessbridges.com
Jim Johnson’s marketing background covers over 30 years of marketing experience, although his entrepreneurial skills date back to when he was eleven years old and made jewelry from agates he collected and polished. He went door to door at Christmastime to sell these great “stocking stuffers”, and was earning over $20.00 a day (not too shabby for 1961 standards).

Jim started marketing in the tourism industry for motor coach and cruise tour packages by entering the family bus company and working his way up from bus washer to Vice President Sales & Marketing. There they pioneered the pulse-hub concept that has served Federal Express and other airlines. They used it in suburban transit services 4 years before FedEx existed. Jim has served as a transportation consultant with Peter Schauer Associates, The Urban Mass Transit Administration (UMTA) and USDA Rural and Small Urban Transportation projects. His specialty was in the areas of service delivery and cost allocation for multi-faceted transportation systems.

The highlight of Jim’s career was the engineering of a privatized inter-campus transit service for the University of Minnesota, which was the largest inter-campus transit service in the US, the $20 Million project saved the University and State of Minnesota over $3,000,000.00 over the life of the 6 year contract, it now is in its 22nd year of continued success.

Jim’s journey into the data field began when he mentored networking clubs on the planning and communication skills required for successfully building a business through referrals. He found that the quality of prospects was lacking, people would refer prospects that were below their ideal target/comfort level. He discovered that using a target list of ideal prospects produced much better referrals. People came to him asking for help in the creation of ideal prospect list based on their criteria. This led to the development of special workshops for sales organizations that wanted to improve the quality and quantity of ideal clients in their B-to-B customer base.

Jim knew if he were to succeed, that he would need to specialize. The breakthrough opportunity occurred early in 1998, when a telemarketing client called for a list that required some special data appends for a bank. He filled the need and more requests followed. Jim then took the time to investigate what was the demand; he learned that the bank merger frenzy was creating the demand and there was potentially a large and untapped market available serving the banking industry. He has expanded from serving banks in Minnesota to serving the data needs of banks in 25 states today.

Jim is certified in the following: Facilitator and distributor of “Heroic Environment Shared Values Process”, “Successful Referral Prospecting” program, and the “Banking on Referrals” program. He is a licensed and trained distributor for Dun & Bradstreet - Sales and Marketing Solutions. Jim also is a distributor for Market Models information and database technologies. He is a member of one CBMC Forum (Christian Business Men’s Committee) and Facilitator of a second CBMC Forum and a sponsor of the 12 Seeds Institute. www.12seeds.com

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