Les Proctor is an independent marketing consultant who operates his practice from his home office in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. He’s been happily married almost 7 years to his beautiful and very organized wife Kim Novak, the love of his life. Together they have three young children: Charlie, Mary, and Lucy.
How it happened
Originally hailing from Columbia, Missouri, Les’s parents split up when he was 5, and he was thus privileged to divide his time following his Mom to Mexico City & Acapulco (2nd grade), Miami (5th grade), and Atlanta (6th thru 8th grade)–and his Father and Beloved Grandparents in Boone County, Missouri (K-1st grade; 3rd-4th grade; 9th grade)–until it was decided that maybe it was best he move to Boarding School in St. Louis (10th-12th).
After leaving his Alma Mater, Thomas Jefferson High School in St. Louis (to which he attributes his life-long love of learning, appreciation for hard work, and desire for lack of drama in relationships), Les studied French Literature and played Rugby in Neuchatel, Switzerland. Having more fun than was humanly possible, he completed his BA in Liberal Arts in a year-and-a-half at The University of Texas at Austin, where he played Rugby for the Longhorns. Converting from Heathenism to Presbyterianism at University Presbyterian Church, he also played Intramural Football for the “Haloes”.
His first job was on the 5th Floor of the Tishman Building in NYC, working for a company that grew out of Ted Bates Advertising’s Data Processing Department. “Ed Mayer started off in a mailroom. I started off handling “packages” or all the reports sent daily to the biggest Advertising Agencies on Madison Avenue”, he says, comparing himself to one of the all time greats.
Initializing a long trend of blazing trails and starting trends, he personally led the regentrification movement of Mid-town Manhattan, in his rent-stabilized apartment on the 2nd floor of the Southwest Corner of 55th & 7&th, which cost $642/month in 1987 dollars. And, he played Rugby for the NYAC (Winged Foot Rugby), and volunteered at the Soup Kitchen at 5th Avenue Presbyterian Church.
Realizing that he’d made a huge mistake, and that rather than handling production phones, payroll, and cost allocations for the biggest advertising agencies on the planet, he’d rather ”sharpen the pencil” to take the next step in the canvas of life, and move from the data processing side of agency work to the creative side of agency work.
So he moved to Arizona to attend a top-ranked Business School in Phoenix. It was at Thunderbird, The American Graduate School of International Management that he made the conscious decision to hang up his Rugby Boots and start writing, so that eventually, after a string of sales jobs that would have made David Ogilvy proud, he could establish his own one-man direct marketing agency.
While Editor of the School Newspaper, he interviewed among others, Barry Goldwater, who asserted: “Work like hell. You have to.” Les agrees with Barry wholeheartedly, and has followed Barry’s advice every day since then. During his stay in Phoenix, one of the things he enjoyed most was hiking Camelback Mountain. Ever the staunch convert to Presbyterianism, it was during this period that he experienced a personal epiphany, and realized “After Vatican II, what are Protestants still protesting for?”. And scuttling 400+ years of Proctor Family history, he converted to Catholicism at St. Thomas the Apostle Church.
Coincidentally, this was the time everything started coming together and he found his first job in Direct Marketing. Direct Marketing, the distintive feature of which is its measurability, really appealed to him as a vocation, and he really ‘took to’ as a discipline, learning to appreciate all the facets of (1) testing (2) measuring, and (3) continually improving. ”DM is total quality management applied to marketing”, Les says, and he has been working diligently at his practice ever since. ”The beauty of Direct Mail lies not only in the medium, but in the scientific method used to continually achieve higher response rates and lower cost of customer acquisitions. The very same method we use to increase sales and profits in the Mail is what’s driving results on the Internet as well.”
Not only does he owes his livelihood his choice of profession, he owes his entire life to it, because it was thus that he met his wife at a trade show; the DMA Fall Conference 1999. So, he moved to Cleveland for love, married Kim Novak, and now 7 short years later, they have three beautiful, talented, and smart children: Charlie 5, Mary almost 3, and Lucy 7 months. Les is very grateful for everything that he has, and is glad to work from home so he can watch his children grow up.
“I love what I do. I’m a husband, a father, and a business owner. It’s fun,” he affirms.