"I don't know quite how it happened that I'm making $1,000,000 a month," says Cortes Wesley Randell, 32, a Washingtonian who is president and chief executive of National Stu dent Marketing Corp. "I just sit in the office and talk to people."
Randell's fast-growing wealth, which he offhandedly understates, comes from stockholdings. His company promotes or sells diverse goods and services: mouthwash and antacid pills, magazines and record-club memberships, vacation cruises. It even does naval recruiting in a fickle market of 10,500,000 college and high school students in the U.S. and Canada. Since April 24, when the company brought out a...