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GoldfishNetwork.com Owners Lisa and Michael Thayer Have a Passion For Marketing

By Jennifer Clampet
The Times, Jan 24, 2008

“BIG FISH, BIG POND” Michael and Lisa Thayer, owners of GoldfishNetwork.com, hold in their hands their own marketing plan for their Web site design and marketing business.

TUALATIN, OR. Through muffled crunching, a woman began to speak on the other end of the phone.

The woman caller was unmistakably munching on something as she began to talk, remembered Lisa Thayer, co-owner of GoldfishNetwork.com.

The caller admitted she had found Lisa’s business card attached to the front of a bag of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers. The crackers had quieted her hunger, and the card had piqued her interest.

“What exactly can you do for me?” the woman caller asked.

In a sense, Michael and Lisa Thayer’s company, GoldfishNetwork.com, works to get the word out.

“We take a client’s vision and make it a web site that represents them out in the world. That’s our goal,” Michael said. But the GoldfishNetwork also works to help clients, mostly small business owners, learn to market themselves.

As a 15-year-old dishwasher at a restaurant, Michael learned early on that marketing pays off. And at the age of 27, he set a record as designer and distributor of a Lake Tahoe calendar that sold 65,000 copies, still a record today.

Now at the age of 50, Michael said, “I learned to sell myself and what I was doing, because if I didn’t, no one else would.”

“Every business has a story,” noted Michael as he leaned forward in a swivel chair at the GoldfishNetwork offices off SW Boones Ferry Road in Tualatin. The blue walls and jazz music playing in the background give the office a soothing atmosphere.

Life hasn’t always been this calm. Being married to an entrepreneur, Lisa said, is like riding a roller coaster but, after 14 years of marriage, the couple has been able to find a perfect venue for each of their talents. Michael, the creative one who loves to hear people’s stories, and Lisa, the numbers-driven one with a business degree, both share a love for marketing.

The couple owns shelves filled with books on the subject. Michael calls marketing their hobby. But as GoldfishNetwork approaches its three year anniversary, marketing is proving to be more than just a pastime.

This month the company was recognized as one of 14 businesses in Oregon and Southern Washington to be in the running for the 2007 Better Business Bureau Business of the Year Torch Award.

The winners of the 2007 Business of the Year Torch Award will be announced at an awards ceremony and luncheon Jan. 24 at the Multnomah Athletic Club in Portland.

Other businesses nominated for the award include Ron Tonkin Toyota, Hawthorne Auto Clinic and Bridge City Legal Inc. in Portland and Paintegrity in Forest Grove.

The public nominated the businesses for demonstrating excellence in customer service, innovative business practices and community involvement.

The Thayers believe they were nominated for the award because of their community involvement. The couple is actively involved in the Love Box for Troops program, which encourages people to pack up boxes of goodies and send them off to deployed troops, and both are active in the Tualatin Chamber of Commerce. Michael is serving as a chamber board member this year, and Lisa is the chair of the technology committee.

“There is no end to the help they’ve given to us,” said chamber Executive Director Carla Thaler.

The Thayers and their contract employees designed and implemented the TualatinCrawfishFestival.com web site within two weeks as the crawfish festival drew near.

“They came back with something better than we ever expected,” Thaler said of the web site.

The Thayers would like to be known in the community for the business-building work they do for their clients. But for now most people know the couple for their marketing idea, the goldfish.

Cabinets above desk top computers in the company’s office hold bags of goldfish crackers ready to be handed out as part of the company’s own marketing plan.

Lisa noted that it’s pretty common for the office to get calls from people snacking on the crackers as they chat away about their business needs.

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7) You can actually walk in and visit. We love meeting our clients face to face and sitting down with them to understand and deliver the online image they want. We offer a FREE initial consultation of up to 1 hour. Besides, we also have a vast tea selection, great coffee, and bags of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish snacks.

Contact us at www.GoldfishNetwork.com and we’ll be glad to be of service to you.
And you’ll have new friends in the web design and marketing business!

Thanks!
Michael and Lisa Thayer