Joseph A. Krueger

Joseph Krueger is no novice when it comes to survival. His father died when Joe was five. Subsequently on the run with his mother, he fled the Midwest, constantly on the move across 7 states for more than a decade. They remained undercover for 14 years, pursued by private investigators, to avoid a custody lawsuit by his paternal grandfather.

While this was an unusual circumstance in which to grow up, Joseph lived through an extraordinary array of experiences, many challenging, many that would prove invaluable in his adult years.

• As a seven-year-old he collected bottles of the beach, earning money from deposit refunds (and picking up on some “colorful vocabulary” along the way).

• He sold copies of multiplication tables to 4th grade classmates, turning profits into a wholesale inventory of scarce, high-demand bubble gum to sell at a profit. (Double Bubble had funnies in the wrappings.)

• While filling in at age 8 as substitute dishwasher in a restaurant, he developed a lifetime skill and apparent passion for cleaning pots and pans (when on KP duty, in boot camp, army cooks thought he was nuts).

• As a teenager, Joe worked nights in an aircraft factory to pay his mother’s medical bills.

• Later, he held down jobs part-time as a bellman in a hotel, a parking valet, dishwasher & waiter, telecommunications installer and door-to-door salesman for cookware . . . experience he credits for much of his later success.

Joe actually started his adult life as an engineer at the urging of his high school counselors. He was employed in the aerospace electronics industry working on experimental programs involved with German technicians in the Post WWII Operation Paperclip program. While this was interesting work, overall Joe didn’t find it fulfilling. (It was likely due to his wide range of exciting experiences while growing up that made him more “action oriented.”)

Subsequently he was recruited into military intelligence, trained and commissioned as a Special Agent in Counterintelligence for the US Army in Europe during the Cold War years, running up to the Vietnam War. (If it was “action” he sought, the building of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis delivered plenty.) He attributes his skills in liaison and interrogation as largely an outgrowth of his experience selling cookware door-to-door during college years and his several early entrepreneurial ventures.

Capitalizing on his security and counter terrorism training and background with the military, Joe subsequently became licensed as a Private Investigator based in Southern California and President of an Industrial Security Communications Firm consulting to businesses, specializing in counter espionage and theft prevention.

When a client with a struggling engineering project reached out for his help, Krueger found himself becoming a direct marketer, pretty much by accident. (Joe didn’t know there was such a title!) His success with that start-up resulted in calls and led him to more successes based on his motivational and sales communications skills – and soon attracted large corporate executives from companies facing marketing challenges from all over the U.S.

The Krueger Consultancy, later with the collaboration of author, educator and financial writer Virginia S. Nicols, operates under the trademark, The Marketing Machine®. Their firm specializes in corporate marketing and lead-generating programs for financial, utility and technical clients. The team has created marketing programs, materials and campaigns that at last count have generated over $5 Billion in sales and been recognized with virtually every major industry award over 3+ decades.

While their work as Direct Marketing Consultants continues, the majority of their current activity is focused on sharing their disaster recovery expertise, communications experience and understanding via non-fiction reference book series. The first is the Professional Marketing series; the second series, on Emergency Preparedness, is supported by their active website EmergencyPlanGuide.org.