John W. Scherer began his career by selling computer clones to mom-and-pop computer dealers in the late 1980s. When no one understood how to use them, he created a $100 million empire as the video professor. Mr. Scherer began making and selling software tutorials for computers. He celebrates his 20th anniversary this year. The professor has produced 40 titles of computer lessons, including for Microsoft Excel, Word and PowerPoint. In 1990 we started selling our product to retailers, he said. But due to poor shelf placement, we weren't going anywhere and [were] slowly getting broke, so if it wasn't for the TV infomercial, we would have gone out of business. Mr. Scherer produced his first video infomercial in 1991 with Jeff Conway, star of the movie Grease and the television show Taxi. The professor taught Mr. Conway how to operate a computer within 30 minutes. The price of TV time had skyrocketed at that time thou