Martin is a former Royal Naval (RN) officer, dual national, raconteur, lecturer, comedian, briefer, sage, wit, bon vivant, travel adviser, marketing rainmaker, and remarkably capable author, if you love terrific humor. He is also bi-lingual (English-US and US-English) with strong historical subject matter expertise.
School
Martin was born in Portsmouth, England 1946. His father was an RN officer. Martin's family spent postings in South Africa, Sri Lanka, and Scotland before settling in Portsmouth when his father retired.
Martin attended the prestigious Portsmouth Grammar School. He obtained a RN scholarship for entry into Dartmouth College and he obtained a place to study Electrical Engineering at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University effective two years after he joined the Navy. This meant he was two years older than his fellow students – his maturity was a fact the College valued highly.
Royal Navy
Martin served on four ships – three under training – HMS Eastbourne, HMS Tiger, HMS Bronington, and finally HMS Cleopatra. After graduating with a Cambridge degree, he was appointed to HMS Cleopatra, a Leander Class frigate. This lasted only 19 months because the RN wanted to send him to the Royal Naval Engineering College, Manadon to fill a need as the lecturer in Control Engineering to their post degree weapons engineers.
Martin spent 3 ½ years there before he was sent to Royal Naval College, Greenwich with King Charles for the one term Lieutenant's Staff Course designed to educate the students on topics such as Government and Defense Strategy. Afterwards, he went to the Army University at Shrivenham for the one-year Guided Weapons Master of Science course. He did well enough on his MSc to be offered some excellent appointments including one going to the US as the Sub-launch Harpoon Missile Programme Manager.
Prior to leaving for Washington DC, he spent a year in Weymouth, southwest England managing some critical Harpoon radar seeker trials.
Martin's 2 1/2 years in the US saw tremendously successful launches of the Sub Harpoon missile. When Martin had 18 months still to go in the US, he resigned his commission to remain in the US. He had been scheduled to join the aircraft carrier, HMS Invincible, on her first commission. When he resigned, someone else took his place and a year later HMS Invincible was in the Falklands War and Martin's replacement was in danger.
Working in the US
In 1981, Martin joined Delex Systems, a $12M US Navy threat and tactics development company, in Northern Virginia. Delex had received a contract to write a Harpoon tactical manual for the US Navy's international allies, who had bought the Harpoon anti-ship missile. Delex did not have anyone with Martin's skillset. Martin solo aced writing the manual incorporating customer-friendly features like metric and English units and graphics on every page. The US Navy Chief of Naval Operations gave him a commendation. Martin was promoted by Delex to handle all the Harpoon tactical trainer, training, and documentation publications business. Two years later, he was made a Vice President of everything Delex Harpoon and a year later also given all the Aegis work to oversee.
McDonnell Douglas/Boeing
If Martin has one shortcoming, it is that he is beyond awful at office politics. He has always focused on getting the job done while others position to insert their tongues up the rear end of their boss. This caused him to leave Delex and join McDonnell Douglas (MDC), the manufacturer of the Harpoon missile. Within six months, the USN Harpoon Program Manager asked that Martin be made available to be the lead briefer to all international countries who had bought or were contemplating buying Harpoon. The fact that Martin was ex-RN and had written the seriously appreciated Harpoon Tactical Employment Manual as well as the fact that he knew several of the Allied Air Force and naval officers, made this a US Navy masterstroke.
Martin then was promoted up the MDC management chain to be the Head Harpoon Marketeer but not made an Executive like his predecessor. He was then asked to be the Campaign Manager for a $1B standoff, land attack, missile launched from Royal Air Force fast jets. Despite putting a sensational bid on the table, MDC was screwed when the UK Government opted to use the contract to cement a massive British-French missile company merger.
Martin returned to St. Louis where he was finally promoted to Director, five years after being totally qualified. Boeing then acquired MDC and Martin was made Head of MDC - Boeing - Rockwell Missiles Business Development. A year later, he was made Boeing's Head of Europe Business Development. Then, when his boss retired, he became a victim of politics again and was sent to a really tough assignment in Philadelphia where they built very expensive Chinook helicopters and marketed them incompetently.
His last Boeing job was international maritime patrol aircraft business development. His contribution to winning of the $80B US Navy Poseidon P-8A Multi-mission Maritime Aircraft was really significant.
Overall, he was the leader/major contributor to Boeing's capture of $26B business from US and 30 countries and was known as 'the rainmaker'.
Fisher Aerospace & Defense Group
Martin was so badly treated by Boeing, he retired and went to Richmond to found a consulting company, Fisher Aerospace and Defense Group (FisherADG). For 19 years, he has run this highly diverse business consulting company with 20 clients with combined annual revenues of $284B in revenues. Seven of his clients were international - from UK, Australian, Sweden, Germany, and Israel.
FisherADG's US clients included Lockheed, Raytheon, Elbit Fort Worth, Saab, and Lufthansa Technik. For all sizes of US and international companies/organizations, he provides a broad range of consulting services in strategy development, strategic planning, business development, program and subcontract management, business operations, customer relations, and marketing communications, and the supporting functional skills needed to position for, win, and execute international and US aerospace, homeland security, and local commercial business. He also helps 'not for profits' and charities, gratis.
He developed strategic plans for the US Navy (USN) and seven commercial organizations and has been three CEOs' principal strategic/tactical business adviser ('CEO's friend' role). For two companies, he operated as Senior VP of Business Development until he found the company a full-time replacement for himself. He provides critical advice on 'separating his clients from their competition', market capture, profile and image enhancement, website focus, business processing, business development, and proposal development.
He has developed 200 Business Tools, Templates, and Techniques, which are made available gratis to clients - only charging for changes for a client's specific applications.
5th Career
Martin's fifth career is now based in Jacksonville, Florida. He continues consulting but at a lower level. He has completed his two books discussed herein.
He is a frequent moderator/speaker at global conferences and has been a lecturer on the globalization of European industry to the USN War College international strategic studies Masters’ course, and St. Louis and Washington Universities' MBA classes.
Lecturing and Speaking
He has lectured to the University of Richmond, the D-Day Memorial, and the US Navy Reserve Officers Training Corps, on a broad range of topics such as Great Dictators, Patton, NATO, Amazing Leaders, Page Turning Authors, Stunning Maritime Victories, and the Royal Family.
Martin’s Philosophy
Martin’s entire career has been driven by “Doing the right thing.” From writing two books in the early 1980’s that were a smash hit for the US Navy and their all allies; to inventing a new Harpoon missile variant that kept a production line going 25 years; and to revolutionizing the US Navy’s International strategy, Martin made a tremendous difference.
He then decided to invent Aries II to make a real difference to the so important memories of our servicemen and servicewomen.
Special Memento - Aries II - Development
Aries II is a black marble 3 1/2, in x 7 in block, laser engraved to convert black to white. Information includes iconic buildings and ships, crests/logos, mottoes, and unique text for every Aries.