2005 has been an amazing year for ShopforT1. We have gone from a 2-man start-up in 2002 to a driving force in the t1 line sales industry. What most people don't know is that our success is not a fluke - everyone involved in ShopforT1 has a lifetime of success minded habits and achievements behind them. Allow me to go - one by one - through the people that make ShopforT1 work and explain how they have been groomed for success in the telecom battlefield.
1. Adam Edwards - CEO, President
Eagle Scout, High School football captain, 2-year LDS Mission to Seoul, Korea, 3.99 GPA at Brigham Young University - his only non-A coming his freshman year in U.S. History. He told me that day that "I'm not going to get another B", and he was more than right, he got all A's from his Sophomore year through graduation - without even an A-. He was heavily recruited by each of the big 5 accounting firms, and he selected KPMG, where he quickly rose to the top of his auditing group. He was only at KPMG for 2 years when he was offered a job as Controller of a public company - Irvine Sensors (Silicon Film Division). He travelled the globe meeting with shareholders and VC's, successfully raising money for the operation. When engineering hit a snag, he had to restrain himself from going into the lab and building the prototype himself! When the company was forced to declare Chapter 7, Adam was recruited by serval high-tech firms looking to fill CFO positions, but Adam wanted more than just an executive-level position with a Fortune 500 company - he wanted to create a revolution and have the ability to call the shots without interference or distraction from outside shareholders. He wanted to build a company from scratch that would take on his personality, and succeed as he has succeeded. His dream came true in 2002 when he and I started Telarus, Inc.
2. Patrick Oborn, Chef Innovation Officer
Eagle Scout, High School/College football player, 2 year LDS mission to Madrid, Spain, 3.79 in Electrical Engineering at Brigham Young University, Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from BYU (all 6 years on academic scholarship). I'm a humble guy, but very self-confident. My freshman year of college I went to class with fear that I was the dumbest one in the class - but by the sixth year at BYU I would know that I would lay claim to one of the few A's available and that the rest of the students would have to fight for the A- and B's, C's, and D's. Engineering, Math, Statistics - it all makes sense to me. After completing my Masters Degree, I was recruited by TRW Space & Defense in Redondo Beach, CA (close to LAX) to design high-speed analog IC's (computer chips) for satellite communication systems. At the same time I began a home-based business of selling telecommunications on the internet through Cognigen. I called my website CheapRates.com, where I sell cheap long distance rates and cheap travel rates. The website got the attention of the founder of Cognigen, Kevin Anderson, who in 1999 offered me the position of webmaster for all of Cognigen. Though I had never taken a web design class in my life, I took the job and left the field of tradition electrical engineering in favor of marketing engineering. During my 3 years at Cognigen I learned how to create e-commerce web sites to take orders, explain a complicated sale in a simplified manor understandable by customers, and most importantly how to interact with agents and company management/investors. When I spit off to form Telarus with Adam Edwards, we modelled the business after Cognigen with a large business focus, drawing on the power of the agent network and combining it with internet marketing tools and professionally trained T1 consultants; all of which combine to make ShopforT1 what it is today. Now we had all of the pieces in place to build an empire - for the benefit of our agents and for the benefit of our new partner, Cognigen Networks.
Though Cognigen didn't invest money to help us start out, they invested their time and their trust. Having worked for Cognigen in the past, I knew exactly what was necessary for our relationship to be mutually beneficial - sales, support, and training. If we could build the tools that agents could use to market online and offline, if we could adequately support agents, and if we could adequately train agents to market and sell T1's effectively - Cognigen would throw their muscle behind us. On September 11, 2003, we were ready for our official launch, and Cognigen didn't disappoint. In fact, every important member of the Cognigen Board of Directors was present on our Launch Call to endorse our program and the 'bless it'. We have followed up the great launch and kept up the momentum with an array of monthly lead generator training calls, and weekly T1 consultant training calls.
When we initially put together our list of vendors, and attempted to explain to them what we intended to do, the reaction was one of skepticism. Not knowing or understanding my background with Cognigen (a telecom MLM company), and being oblivious to the power of the agent network, they reluctantly met with us and heard us out. As we began to pick up momentum with our agents, and as we also began to ascend in the search engine rankings, sales began to trickle in. Soon, the trickle became a stream, and now the stream has become a river. If there is one thing T1 providers understand, it's sales. Soon they were calling us volunteering to host training calls and to raise our commission for more prominent positioning on our web site. With the increase in commissions, our agents began to make money equivalent to a full-time income and the momentum continued to spiral upward.
The success wasn't met without some speed bumps though. One of the biggest challenges to starting a company without Venture (Vulture) Capitol is cash flow. As we began to grow, our company's needs also grew; trouble was our income was 4-6 month delayed due to the slow cash turn-around with T1 sales. We dipped WAY into our own savings accounts to finance employees, servers, vendor visits, bandwidth, collocation, etc. The sacrifice was worth it - not having others with their hands in our cookie jar has been our saving grace. Now the company has adequate cash flows to grow at a very rapid pace (you can read about the new IT Director we hired below). We have a total of 14 web servers running 24/7 processing real-time T1 price quotes, customer proposals, running our in-house CRM/Back Office software (Version 2.0 is due out on June 1, 2005), running our email servers, and most importantly, our SQL (database) servers. With the great work-ethic our 7-man staff, we are making progress at 7X the rate we were just a year ago. Our agents get better support, our web sites are able to do more things, our training is better, our commissions are higher than ever, and more and more agents are becoming self-reliant and financially free as a result of their hard work within our program. I am proud to see the agents, all of whom I consider my friends on a personal level, doing so well. Seeing them pay their mortgages with the money they've earned selling T1s through our program makes it so I sleep real well at night! Knowing that the future of the company is in the hands of honest, dedicated, hard-working men and women give me peace of mind - which I'll need as I get ready to become a father (my wife is expecting twins in October).
3. Lance Akins, Sales Support Manager
Lance graduated top of his class from the University of Texas, Austin (hook 'em horns!) Oddly enough, he majored in Psychology, which has proven to be one of his biggest assets in the telecom industry. What most people don't realize in our field is the importance of relationships, and Lance has the tools to diagnose the personality type of the person on the other end of the phone line - enabling Lance to frame the conversation in a way that maximizes his success. I like to call it Psychological Engineering. Lance has a wealth of experience, with companies like Dell, ConnectSouth, and New Edge Networks. When we hired Lance, he had been our channel manager for about 1 year - and we knew ahead of time how excellent he was. One of the best days in the life of our young company was when Lance told us that he would accept the position of Sales Support Manager for Telarus. When our agents engage customers with tough questions, they go to Lance - our expert - who quarterbacks them all the way to the end zone. Our closers look like heroes while Lance lurks in the shadows, a true team player.
4. James Knight, Associate Sales Support Manager
James came to us recently by way of Austin, Texas. In early 2005, we found ourselves with agents banging on our door to get in, and Lance was SWAMPED. We began to interview interested candidates for the job, but Lance insisted we meet James Knight before we make our final decision. In early January James flew to Salt Lake to meet with us. Boy were we impressed. James, also a University of Texas graduate, worked in film and news media before choosing a career in telecom sales. He worked for ConnectSouth, New Edge Networks, and SmartPrice.com, prior to coming on board with Telarus. He is a super-competitive individual who is one of the hardest workers I've ever met. He shows up early to work every day, and he is the last one to leave. But most importantly, he likes to go to Real Salt Lake games with me! What a stud!
More to come soon....
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