What is The Jerrico Effect - The story of my company's Humbled beginnings

It's basically the synergy of my name and my work. The Jerrico Effect is a term I coined to describe my technologies, my sculpting skills and my music production-

I saw a market of people just like me and developed product to help them (and myself first to make sure it worked).

I started the company four years ago, but it started really as a hobby. The Jerrico Effect is the end result of tireless research, mixing, and technology integrations.

It may have started out as a hobby but it developed into the cure for insomnia which plagued me my whole life and the lives of many others.

I needed a way to fall asleep so I started learning about meditation, the brain and anything else that could possibly be related to what is keeping me awake. The problem was I couldn't turn off my thought stream, especially in a dark room at night.

Laying there I swear it felt like I had a coffee IV drip installed into my arm because like the drip thoughts just wouldn't stop flowing through me affecting my entire body (energy). I became restless and frustrated; I had to channel this energy!

I needed an outlet for all my brains information. I was addicted to learning, teaching, and being creative. My habit of learning and then creating things from my knowledge became my habit of insomnia. My brain would work too well in flowing ideas into teaching tools. This had a side effect of overloaded thought streams.

I soon discovered the trick to relaxing the thought stream and allowing my brain to rest and thus allowing me to fall asleep was meditation. I have a hard time meditating unassisted and found others did too so the company mission was born. To me at first I wanted a cure, but I have always been an entrepreneur and an opportunist too so I knew that curing my own problem would lead to a marketable product to help others in this same predicament.

Little did I know the market that was thirsty for this cure was way more than over thinkers. It included just to name a few, people stressing out all the time, people who can't sleep at night, people who needed to relax and all around this had an application to just about every side of life their was!

I started to generate missions in my production.. The first was to create the ultimate meditation CD to help me sleep. I knew if any of this worked on me, the toughest customer I'd get, it would work on anyone.

The innovative nature of my ploy was both stimulating and exciting especially when I showed someone the results of my tireless efforts. My family and friends were my first customers, and although they weren't charged for the CD's their contributions were worth more than money in this stage of my operation!

I actually capitalized on my insomnia as I slept about 4 hours a night for 4 years but never felt tired, I was always excited and energetic.. Some nights I didn't sleep for 2 days! When I slept I slept very efficiently and deep. I learned in my ploy, how sleep cycles worked and in creating the insomnia relief CD's the first 3, Deep Delta Sleep, Destiny Sky, and Hypnogogic Hologram Advanced, I discovered a way to get 8 hours of sleep in 4 hours using the very format of sleep cycles without the wasted 4 hours.

This is not to say you should only sleep 4 hours but the general person will sleep 4 hours (chemicals recharge in your body during certain cycles) and will toss and turn for 4 hours so the 8 hours they sleep is actually only 4 hours of rest.. Which is why most people wake up tired. My CD's helped people to rest deeper and recharge faster more effectively..

Using the CD's during the day for meditation/cat naps also helps you need less sleep at night so I really developed something big here. Later I parlayed this into a format that allowed people to do much more with them.

In the beginning I was trying to solve my problem of not sleeping through trying other companies products but the frustration I found in the uselessness of their CD's just made it worse. It was however this "injustice" I perceived in their products that drove me to build my CD's.

Sound Therapy the Phenomenon that started a chain of innovations in breaking limitations that seem impossible to break!

In my ploy to resolve the limitations of other products I also resolved the limitations of my own. A CD only having 80 minutes, for example was one of my first challenges. I knew their was a way to put more than that on a CD while staying within the confines of the boundaries (i.e. you can't put 81 minutes on an 80 minute CD but their are ways to get around that such as the following example:)

Sound therapy was a binaural CD sampler that allowed people to experience the true power of this technology. I wanted people to have the opportunity to sample every binaural frequency on one CD.

I wanted to put all the relevant frequencies on one CD but the problem is to get any use out of a binaural beat (headphones are required!) you have to listen to it for at least 17 minutes. I came to the conclusion that I could create a binaural frequency track one minute long that was static but loopable.

A binaural beat could be consistent and still powerful so it didn't sound like just a one minute loop due to its progressive nature on your brain state. For example the sound and frequency doesn't change much in that minute but the effect it has on your mind ramps and changes so your mind is all that changes even though the track stays the same and just repeats seamlessly using the loop feature on the CD player.

It didn't require (but was more powerful if you did) the changing of frequencies or different modulations. With this I could fit all 66 tracks on one CD and they got 66 hours out of an 80 minute CD (I recommended an hour for each frequency). It's kind of how rain can be consistent and looped in a one minute loop and still relax you and although the same after 20 minutes your state of mind changes and it soothes more and more. The effect of binaural however is more powerful and useful.

Binaural beats can help alleviate a lot of things, from nausea (the frequency for this helps the brain release hormones that neutralize the stomach acids) to insomnia to headache relief without aspirin (the headache relief frequency triggers the brains release of endorphins and natural pain killers that make a cut not hurt at first for example).

You could also do a clean sweep by listening to all 66 tracks one minute at a time ramping you through all the healing frequencies for a "cleansing" effect.. This also improves your hearing as it gets you used to all types of frequencies like weights improve muscle tone.

My CD's used some pretty complex binaural formulations but this CD was designed to introduce people to the concept of Sound Therapy using binaural beats. Then when they saw the power the other CD's would be much more intense and exciting. I ended up giving this CD away as a way to generate business. It was 66 downloads or a zip file.

I turned disappointment of the inferior (in my opinion) products on the market for meditation into my motivation to make a product unlike anything else out there. Those other CD's weren't just technologically boring they didn't really make me feel relaxed.

The scapes never sounded real to me, and definitely weren't anything special. They all sounded like clones of each other as if they all used the same atmosphere clips. A CD I found at the 99 cent store was actually better than one I paid 30.00 for! That woke me up to the missing parts of this technology. It was not only technologically lacking, but it was based on nothing more than music, or lullaby.. Simple ear candy..

This problem needed a high tech solution and I know in this day and age their was something better.. Their had to be. I knew I had to really engage the listeners brain not just their ears and memory.. a holistic approach would be submersive! I wanted to make people drunk with experience! How else could you make them pass out?

I knew this technology held power that was simply untapped. I didn't give up because I couldn't find a good meditation CD that worked, I decided that if "They" didn't make one I'd become "them" and make one so other people would ask have "they" created a CD for my insomnia? And I'd effectively become the they in this equation (that stimulated me actually to think about.. not waiting for a product like this but actually making one!)

I wanted to invent something that was provocative but exciting enough to grab your full attention, yet soothing enough to put you to sleep.. A heavy distraction

It was this ideology that would coin my company's name and purpose.

I would soon after embarking on the exciting world of generating meditative mind altering CD's need a name to coin the technology and to express my company's mission.

The name came to me when I heard a radio announcer state (and I can't for the life of me remember what he said) something "effect" and I was wracking my brain for a company name to use for my website. I heard the whatever effect coined and thought.. hmm Jerrico (my work) effect.. and it snapped and stuck. The name gained a lot of popularity as people said it made them wonder what the Jerrico effect was!

I decided to use my name because all my life it's always gotten a lot of attention. From people seeing it on my name badge as a food server, to interviews for jobs to working as a cashier at Wal-Mart. People always had a lot to say about how much they liked the name, and how unusual it was but stimulating to say. I figured I'd bank on this stimulation and the term was coined. It was a pun and a great sounding name I thought..

Years later I wanted to change it as I felt kind of guilty and arrogant using my name in the title of my company so I coined the new name TranQUil-Wiser but my customers (past customers) got upset and said that they really liked the old name, they liked the new one but the old one was snazzy.. so I ended up keeping it and using TranQuil-Wiser as the "product line" name.. The TranQUil-Wiser line of CD's. It was coined to mean the CD makes you feel good then makes you wiser through your internal dialogue upgrading.

The coalition of the term Jerrico and my name and my work (as it evolved from just altered states meditation (sleep therapy) to self help really actually made sense. Jericho was a city in Bethlehem that according to the bible was the first city to be destroyed with Sound technology.

The troops marched around the city thousands strong stomping (which creates an earth quaking subsonic sound, and blowing these horns (ultrasonic to sonic sounds) which is said to have been the weapon that brought Jericho down to rubble.

Ironically last year a show called "Jericho" which was massively popular, so popular when they tried to cancel it the company CBS was bombarded with a billion peanuts shipped to them by angry Jericho fans, stating "are you nuts" and the show was brought back (it airs in February 12, 2008 on CBS), yet it was the opposite of the city in Bethlehem!

The irony with this show AND my name is it's the full reverse of the story of Jericho in the bible.. in the bible the town was the bad seed the world was good, but in these here the world is (in the TV show) doomed and Jericho is the safe haven.

My company name although spelled differently was also a sign of hope not negative.. Although the name really made sense. Here's why.

My product took down people's bad internal dialogue which is like tearing down walls that block people from progressing in life, hinders self esteem and expression and the like. So The Jerrico Effect was the effect using sound technologies and synergies to tear down the walls of bad belief systems, filters and the like. Jericho was apparently according to the bible a bad city of deviants (I didn't like that my name was based after a bad city but truthfully its spelled different so its a new evolution or illumination of the term *smiles*)

I wanted to use it in my advertising but decided against it as people generally like to mix things up and may not associate the phrasing to what I meant and so I avoided the confusion. But the technology was brilliant in knocking down these walls as we received a ton of fan mail about our product and how it wonderfully helped them.

We sold the CD's for 8.00 originally then when they picked up the orders came in so fast we couldn't keep up.. we were producing them at home with high tech printers and cutters (for the jewel case art and CD's printing) and we produced a very high quality product, you couldn't tell we made them at home, they came shrink wrapped professionally packaged and shipped in a box not a bubble mailer, with our company logo on it..

I even used a silver/silver CDR and refused to create a CD that didn't use up 79 of the 80 Minutes available.. This was two fold, one so no CDR line was visible on the CD undersurface, and two because I wanted to give my customers the most sonic "bang" for their buck.. I was on a mission to be the best vender of this type of meditation product out there.. I never cut corners even if it cost me more profits than other companies made.

I thought at first of how the snow on a TV, or the hum of a refrigerator or generator would hypnotize you to sleep eventually and so I started there with rain. At first I grabbed sound clips off the internet then tired of the bad quality and did some searching for quality clips I could purchase.

I found a program called atmosphere deluxe and this was the most incredible program I'd ever seen. It had amazing quality real recordings of brooks, rain, thunder and more, but what truly was great was that the program would record them playing together in your own patterns. It had this feature that would pan the volume randomly, and fade in and out sounds to create a truly dynamic sounding atmosphere.

This created some pretty cool sounding natural CD's but I didn't want to be like everyone else, I needed an edge. I purchased and got good at using adobe audition and learned how to manipulate these output recordings of rain and thunder and the like. I would use atmosphere to render the rain clips in different ways and of different lengths. I never mixed and recorded sounds I just made raw sounds recorded with the dynamic fades of the programs features then imported them into audition.

I would use many stereo filters (its a lot like Photoshop only with sound!) to render the sounds more realistic. The real talent came in when I learned how to really sculpt rain to flow through you using perception manipulation and stereo effects. I would have rain flowing around the head in one direction, then layer in the same effect in the opposite direction then add a third one with echoes and auric overtones.

I got so good at turning my imagined reaction such as an ocean that went THROUGH you not just splashing against the rocks and the tides, into a reality that the CD's started to really feel vivid and realistic. The missing element I discovered was immersion. Putting you in the CENTER of the track not just a bystander. Nothing puts you into instant meditation like Virtual Reality. Most recordings use stereo but a non sophisticated version of it. I saw so much wasted potential here. I got my inspiration for doing this from Linkin park.

I discovered also that Linkin park used Cool Edit (the first version of audition before adobe bought the company) to make their fantastic CD's then later realized that they used this same program to make those wonderful stereo effects.

I don't know about you but I think almost every Linkin park track puts you in the center of the stage with them. The effects are impressive and so I wanted to learn this technique with my CD's. Between the musical styles of Pink Floyd and the immersion technologies used by Linkin Park I created an amazing sounding meditation CD! I also gained insight in how Linkin Park wrote their lyrics, with such psychological impact, I learn a lot about how I feel about things through their music. I wanted to make a CD that did this and so my subliminal technologies were next.

I didn't believe that the old school subliminal technologies worked, but between Linkin park lyrics and everything I learned about psychology of memory retention, how the brain stores things its interested in and so forth I developed a phenomenal upgrade to the technology, very cutting edge and not done at all other than in music. I believe music is the best way to memorize anything and so I used this concept.

These became powerfully uplifting CD's and although they sounded phenomenally different from any other out there, these to me were the color televisions shows vs. the black and white ones or the difference between 2D and 3D then again I used a lot of "Time Distortion" techniques so it was really 4D (4th dimension is time)

The problem however was they were just another pretty face in an ocean of meditation products as far as the customers were concerned. To sell them we had to convince people to click into our eBay ads which is where we promoted the product. I added sound clips to the ads but people weren't hearing them because meditation was such a huge market that you had to have a better tag line, technology, or niche than that to stir up people's imagination.

I needed to add more so I looked to brain wave entrainment for my "power source". I sold people on the "Ride" our CD's put them through.. at first it was "Get High legally" but eBay thwarted our slogan as it sounded like we were selling drugs.

As we worked on the marketing angle we continued to add power to our product, and the excitement of what we were creating was uncanny!

I had learned a lot about how the brain worked, how thoughts were stored and how sound related to triggering of memories, visualizations and even chemicals the brain releases naturally for many different things, but binaural beats as powerful as they were eluded me.

I looked to my experts in Venezuela for help. I built a lot of scapes but I wanted to add a bit of music to them, and fuse in binaural beats to really spice up the effects. Caroline Carlin of Doblece Digital was my salvation. She both produced amazing new age music with a pinch of a Rhythm and blues feel, and was adept in binaural beats creation, and mixing.

Together we created some phenomenally packed technologically advanced CD's. These were more cutting edge than anything else available and they truly worked. They didn't just work actually they gave people almost instant results that lasted hours after the 30 minutes to one hour session was complete. (altered states were their original features which helped you meditate, sleep and escape stressful mind states).

We had created the worlds most powerful Altered states technology.. but still this wasn't enough.

We were a dynamic duo, I was a master at sculpting atmospheres and even clips she sent me she created in music software programs, things like drums chimes, Chinese bowls and so on. I would take her clips and musical sets and fuse them into the atmospheres.

It got to the point where I learned enough about binaural beats theory that I knew what was potentially possible and how we could use this technology to its highest potential. I started to come up with ideas and I'd email or instant message her on yahoo with my ideas and she'd intuitively create my binaural "recipes" and email them to me right away. I opened my mail like Christmas presents.. It was like giving a music sheet to a piano player..

I'd go right to work creating amazing uncanny musical sets that were both music and atmosphere. A new prodigy in meditation was born, a synergy of our efforts, talents and collaborations in ideas. We'd have long brainstorm sessions in Yahoo instant messenger, some lasting all night and the next day. We were drunk with stimulation as our creations were becoming more and more intuitive and fun to build.

When our marketing efforts didn't really kick in I sat and pondered what I could use, add to this, or create to make people aware of our product. I spent most of my life studying psychology and was always teaching people about themselves. It hit me one day that wait.. I could use this technology as the "Bed" to the Self Help market. I could produce CD's that not only functioned to help people sleep and heal ailments like headaches. I could develop self esteem CD's, Charisma CD's, and even Job hunt CD's!

With the idea fresh in my mind I hit Google with a vengeance to learn about subliminal technology, memory integration technology and anything else that had to do with programming the internal dialogue like hypnosis.

I had also studied these things in passing for years and understood them pretty well but I wanted to brush up on my skills and really get into formulating affirmations and cutting edge technologies for infusing these affirmations effectively into the subconscious while people experienced their "Meditations Rides".

I spent about a year in psychology forums while creating the music in the first place but didn't make the connection between meditation and psychology and how they could help each other synergize a healing technique, but now I had and was ready to take this to the bank. The memory bank.

I was never really impressed with subliminal technologies as they didn't seem to work on me and the technology seemed a bit archaic and more theory than facts. I sought out however to figure out how the brain worked and connected, associated memories and how sound came into this mix to create a blend of sound and affirmations that would work. I discovered a cutting edge technology in subliminal formatting called Ultrasonic Subliminal however and learned all I could about it. The government used it successfully several times so I thought it may be a viable technology to integrate.

I spent the next year learning all about subliminals and the brain, I even took some classes on it and before it was over I'd cracked the code to getting the affirmations into the persons mind with successful results within a month's time. Subliminals that are just lowered below the music are useless in my opinion but their were other ways to do it that no one had thought of and I had so I played with it in a lot of trial and error sessions and many sleepless nights.

The resulting technology I deemed Subliminal Carousel and was so complicated to create and infuse into the music it took several days to render just one CD with the affirmations. I knew my competition wouldn't figure it out, even if they heard the result (it was both subliminal and audible using some impressive techniques and the 380 degree stereo field) but it worked.

My first CD using this was Incredible Self Esteem and Self Confidence. I listened to this CD every night to help me sleep and not only did it make me pass out quickly and sublimely I would wake up feeling pretty good, ready to attack my day!

After 30 days I was really feeling good and deemed this a winner.

I created 40 CD's to date using this technology and the others collectively called "The Jerrico Effect".

The First 18 CD's were compilations of mine and Caroline's work but she wanted to remain a "silent partner" in the effort so we retained the name as it was. Even the CD's I made on my own were made from a lot of the resulting musical sets that I created from her amazing clips.

When orders first came in they trickled. I knew we were going to need a way to advertise more effectively and since money wasn't yet there we needed a way to do it cheap. eBay was a great way to market but I needed to share the expense. One of my customers asked if he could sell our CD's on eBay too and an idea was born.

I decided to try a new format, where by I'd give him the ready made ads, and all he had to do was plug them into his eBay store and launch them into the marketplace from there. The CD's had to be sold for more money to cover the middle man expense so we brought them to 24.95 + 4.99 shipping and handling (we charged 2.00 for handling because we used good packaging, a box costs us 1.35 alone..)

The eBay seller would pay us 15.00 per sale and keep the rest and we paid for the shipping/handling/packaging/production etc.. They simply invested in running eBay ads and made a profit if the CD's sold. This worked out well and we acquired 5 resellers.

The company started to see a pretty good run of sales on a daily basis and all the advertising expense was split between the "Investors" or eBay resellers, we had minimal expense and produced the product on the fly, but as more money came in we started to make advance copies of the hot sellers to save time.

We did business this way for about a year. Well I did, after music production I was alone in my efforts to do everything. I had no employees no workers, nothing, I was it. I hired my father as one of the eBay resellers and he did assist in creating the CD's he sold so that was a relief off my shoulders.

About a year into this venture I decided to hire a company to manufacture and ship my CD's for me. It was a dream come true- then a nightmare that would tear the company apart.

I sent them the artwork and templates of all 40 CD's and orders continued to pour in. I would email them the names and addresses and pay pal them the funds for the wholesale price of the CD's they shipped and my work was done. I completely dismantled the printing/burning operation and felt a freedom that was unbelievable.. Meditation was now my life.. Literally!

Until it happened. The company never shipped any CD's although they took the money for them. 30 Days went by and nobody had CD's, these were customers that had always received their products 4 days at most from the time they ordered them. I got angry emails every day about where's my CD and for 30 days I lived in mortal hell as I realized I made a very bad business decision. I ended up having to retool the entire thing again and produce the CD's myself.. at my expense.

I drained all of my upgrade money (for our next step in companies evolution) building and shipping these CD's FREE I even offered each of those 300 customers 3 free CD's for their patience (to save my customer base) and they were all happy in the end, I was exhausted and pissed, and took such a beating in this whole thing that I got burned out and lost my mojo. I didn't so much quit as I had to close the doors because I went bankrupt. 4 years in business and a company called short run music put us under with reaper precision.

This was about a year ago and I went back into the working class world again and felt the tremendous relief of letting someone else do all the thinking and networking, dealing with complaints and so forth. I felt bad mostly for the eBayers that were working for me but they understood.

We are thinking of re-launching soon with downloadable versions of the product.. But for now.. The Jerrico Effect is closed. Their was a guy stalking our company for years that also contributed to why we shut down and we eventually lost the domain name as I forgot to renew it and someone took it.. but after what Brian did to us online with his cyber bullying efforts (such as the site he put up to discredit me personally on BWE watch a fake site that people still think is a credible source of information.. I just assume leave the name in the dirt, and use the new one I created "TripKnowlogy" meaning Trips and knowledge.

I've learned a lot in building, maintaining and growing this company, and I wouldn't give the experiences good or bad back for anything. The only regret is that BWE page that keeps attacking me because people simply believe anything they read on the net if it "Looks" credible.. but even the attacks by this Brian guy taught me a lot about patience and tolerance.. Luckily I haven't heard a lick from him in about 2 years (other than him yahoo messaging me to tell me about the pages very existence.

I remember laughing about it.. Then when it was brought up here at hub pages I stopped laughing.. The son of a b**** won the war even though I won the battle. Lessons learned. Have a wonderful day and don't forget to reach for your dreams.. Even if you fail at them they are fun and bring you amazing memories!