CEO seeks new heights for PMA marketing firm

Performance Marketing Associates' Ken Baxter, 58, has been there, done that and now seeks new heights measured in g-force rather than feet or stories.

Baxter is the founder, owner/broker, and chief executive officer of Performance Marketing and Advertising. He began his housing career by hiring, training and motivating a staff of nearly 100 new home specialists at Heartland Realty in Salt Lake City in 1973.

PMA dominated the market for more than a decade, outselling the top five local real estate companies combined. In the 1980s, working with builders, lenders, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Resolution Trust Corp., Performance Marketing successfully liquidated all of the REO (real estate equity owned) high-rise inventory in Salt Lake City.

The 1980s also brought another side of life to Baxter. It was a troubling time for home builders, owners and lenders. Interest rates skyrocketed along with housing prices. Baxter found himself in a personal downward spiral which lasted almost 10 years. He sold his four Rolls Royces and replaced them with a Chevrolet Impala two years older than the one he originally bought when he was a teenager. His wife, Linda, to whom he has been married for 30 years, relinquished her Mercedes 350SL for a motor home. Baxter recovered and today drives a Bentley, among his other cars.

In 1991, Baxter moved his company to Las Vegas, "a culture shock for a small town boy from Orem, Utah," said Baxter, and became a driving force with the No. 1 new home marketing company in Las Vegas, according to Baxter.

Along his road through life, "I was in my 20s and known as the 'king of car stereo liquidators,' learning the art of marketing and advertising and hype on radio stations in Denver and Salt Lake City, Utah," Baxter said.

Today PMA has been directly responsible for more than $7 billion in new home sales volume, according to Baxter. "Since 1990 PMA has closed 30,000 transactions in Las Vegas. Our job is to promote other brands -- Adagio, Canyon Creek Villas, Dolce by the Lakes, Solevita.

"Combined, we closed more than all the other marketing companies in the valley. In 2004 through 2005 alone, we've done $1 billion in sales," Baxter said.

Baxter's professional climb to success will soon be matched personally when he climbs aboard the suborbital inaugural flight of Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic's spacecraft scheduled for 2009 or 2010, according to Branson.

This is billionaire Branson's latest venture into space tourism. Branson, the Chairman of Virgin Group, a conglomerate of 360 companies, Branson is also known for his attempts to circle the earth by hot-air balloon.

According to Baxter, "The program is designed so that ordinary earthlings can get the experience of going to outer space.

"I was fascinated with the space program, beginning with the Russian Sputnik, as a new frontier which has lasted my whole life," Baxter said.

The catalyst, according to Baxter, was a "60 Minutes" television program foray into space exploration for profit that was aired Nov. 4, 2004.

The show spotlighted Burt Rutan, the designer of Branson's passenger SpaceShipTwo. This ship, while attached to the mothership WhiteKnightTwo, was released for a suborbital flight of 80 miles into space.

Branson also appeared and spoke about non-government flights to outer space. The price of $200,000 did not daunt Baxter. The next day Baxter said, "I'm going to outer space and need to get my tickets."

When Branson was asked what his philosophy for suborbital space flight was, he said, "Most importantly we could develop a new kind of space launch system to take people into space for much, much less. With three days training, understanding space flight better and see the beauty of the earth.

"Also, it is cost effective and low carbon emissions. Every time Cape Canaveral produces a launch, it has the same environmental impact of the Hiroshima bomb. Ours will be equivalent to a business class ticket on a 747 from Las Vegas. Our spaceship is the forerunner of doing all sorts of work in space," Branson said.

After three days of training in September 2007 in Philadelphia, Baxter describes his experience:

"Seated in a simulation cabin I was excited to be part of a history making adventure. I heard the countdown, then a moment of quiet, followed by a controlled power pinning me back into my seat. I was overwhelmed by the roar of the rocket motor and my eye-watering acceleration as I traveled at almost 2,500 miles per hour, over three times the speed of sound in a matter of seconds.

"At this moment I see the sky through the large window and it displays the colors of a prism -- cobalt blue, mauve, indigo and then black. Suddenly the motor is off and it is quiet. It is the silence of space.

"Testing my tolerance to g-forces at level 6 and the stresses to the body on re-entry, I feel sheer terror for the 35 seconds of this part of the flight. There is 10 to 15 minutes of weightlessness coming back down."

On the professional horizon for Baxter is a return to liquidation of REOs, and foreclosures in Las Vegas.

A new personal passion appears on the face of this earth for Baxter.

Since meeting Branson, he also has become a clarion for alternative fuels -- alcohol, windmills, solar power versus carbon. "The biggest cause of carbon dioxide and biggest detriment is the burning of the rainforest. Planting trees are the lungs of the earth," Baxter said.

Baxter is the father of Kenny Jr. and the grandfather of 6-week-old Taylor Marie. Baxter attended Brigham Young University and the Builder University.