Summer 1997
A little more than a decade ago, Michael McCafferty was flat broke. These days, he's flying high. Michael is the creator of TeleMagic, an information-management program for salespeople. He created the software after an ahead-of-its-time idea for an on-line yellow pages failed to take off and cost him nearly everything he had. Before long, TeleMagic was the leading software of its kind, and in 1992 Michael sold his company to the Sage Group, an English firm.
Selling out wasn't originally in his plans, Michael says. "I just wanted to pay the bills. But after a while, the business starts running you. I didn't like constantly having to stay one step ahead of the competition. I didn't like the pain in my side that was growing worse every day." Now, Michael spends his time -- pain-free, he notes happily -- flying around the world in his Waco YMF, an open cockpit biplane. This summer, he'll fly across Europe. He plans to visit Australia next year. All this is preparation for a round-the-world flight Michael has planned for 2000. If he succeeds, it would be the first such flight by a pilot in a privately-owned, open cockpit biplane.
"I'm living the best life I could imagine," Michael says. He'll be e-mailing reports from his European adventures this summer. To read them, visit Michael's most inspiring web page at www.michaelmccafferty.com.