About Echo24

February 13, 2005

I thought we were almost done. After spending the past several weeks stealing time here and there writing content for our new website, I thought I only had two more sections to put together when my good friend and web designer informed me that we should have an "about us" section. This is supposed to be the section that details our company history and background on key staff. At first I rebelled.

He has forced me to look at our business from so many different perspectives that not only have I learned to define what we are all about as a company, I've learned what I want us to become. So, I've determined this guy knows what he's talking about and despite my initial reaction to the whole "about us" concept, allowed him to convince me it was necessary. I told him I would toss the idea in my head and let it cook for awhile. After a couple of days, I had an idea what I wanted to do. I've had to write "company profiles" before in response to RFPs and absolutely hated doing it.

The last thing anyone wants to see on a website is a bunch of verbiage that reads like a boring textbook or marketing fluff that reeks of propaganda.

Before I tell you the Echo 24 story, I have to take you back to Lisa and my previous employer, NaCom. Lisa Renner, CPA graduated with a bachelor's degree in accounting from Muskingum College in 1989 and was soon hired with "big six" firm KPMG Peat Marwick as an auditor. After spending many months in the Washington DC area auditing various companies, she decided she really wanted to work closer to her home in Ohio. So, in late 1990, she took a staff accountant position at NaCom, a national telecommunications cabling contractor.

In January of 1992, I began my nine year career at NaCom. I was coming off a four year enlistment in the US Air Force and was fortunate to land a job as a security system technician. At the time, security system installation was a new business venture for NaCom whose primary business had been as a CATV contractor for all the major cable companies across the United States. Unfortunately, the security business wasn't going well and the company decided to bag it.

The good news was that the company was also trying to diversify in other ways by building a presence in the new LAN cabling market. Instead of being laid off, I was reassigned as a tech in the new LAN division.

NaCom had a unique, if not proprietary, way of operating its labor force. Although the company had over a thousand "technicians", none of them were actual employees, but "independent contractors". As a security system tech, they had hired me as an employee because it was a requirement of the contract. With my "reassignment", the company wasn't quite sure what to do with me. Because I had past supervisory experience and a technical degree, the company took a chance on me and made me a part-time project coordinator, full time contractor. This was my first taste of quasi self-employment and a great learning experience.

After about three years of working as a coordinator / contractor, the business had grown to the point where my boss had been promoted to area manager. I had achieved a fair amount of successes and was promoted to project manager a month later. Although I had experience supervising crews and managing projects, this was my first experience being responsible for profit and loss. Now, in addition to dealing with customer issues, I was getting calls from corporate. It was at this time that I really go to know Lisa. She taught me nearly everything I know about sales recognition / accruals, inventory reconciliation, job costing, and more. The way her mind worked was pure genius. All my life I had this notion that accounting was a colossal bore. Lisa made it exciting. I liked talking to her. I liked seeing her even more. In September of 96 we were married.

At about the same time, Lisa was promoted to Assistant Corporate Controller. She had been instrumental in the helping take the company public on the NASDAQ exchange and was starting to be recognized for her dedication and talent.

Business was good and getting better. My area as project manager had expanded to include Northeast Ohio, Michigan, and West Virginia. I was accustomed to running the best commercial operation in the company. In 1997 I was promoted to Area Manager. By 1998 my area had our best year with over six million in sales with the highest gross sales and profitability for commercial sales in the company on a national basis.

Dick Treacle began his career at NaCom in 94 as a satellite installer. Dick had previous experience as a business owner and adapted very well to NaCom's "independent contractor" status. By 96, Dick came to work for me on the Commercial Services side as a Project Coordinator. When I was promoted to Area Manager, Dick was quickly promoted to Manager of the Northeast Ohio Operation. Dick performed incredibly on two very large and very aggressive projects for Kent State University.

Dick is one of those people that others gravitate toward and his apartment on campus became a regular hangout for techs, consultants, project managers, vendors, and university personnel. I have been saying for years that I would put Dick up against any manager anywhere for his ability to produce quality installations with high customer satisfaction. At some of those project meetings at the university I sometimes wondered if he wasn't E.F. Hutton. To this day I have not seen another manager with the ability to gain the level of loyalty that Dick's techs have for him; the man is simply put, legendary.

In 1999 we were sold and bought by a behemoth electronics retailer based out of Texas. At that time, we were heavily propagandized by senior management that "for the time being" everything would remain "business as usual". And it was for that first year after the buyout. By the following year, our new parent company's real agenda was revealed. They had no understanding or (apparent) interest in the commercial side of our business. Their real interest in our company was on the residential side. They wanted to sell satellite dishes and installation service in their stores nationwide. By late 2000 I was actually told to tell all of our telephony clients to "go elsewhere for service".

At this point some of us saw the proverbial writing on the wall and worked to create that "elsewhere" in Echo 24. I came up with the name "Echo 24" for a few reasons. I wanted something that elicited intrigue. There are so many generic sounding companies with names like "Netcom Communications" or "Teledata Solutions", etc and I wanted something that separated us. Every sales rep that has worked here asks me why it doesn't say "telecommunications" or something similar under our logo on their business cards. Well, in the first place, we are more than a telecom contractor. Secondly, I like that the prospect has to ask "what is Echo 24?" because it is the sales representative's job to explain what we are about! "Echo 24" was my radio call sign when I was an Electro-Mechanical Team Chief in the Air Force on the Minuteman II Missile. "Echo" is the phonetic word for the letter "e" which in today's world implies so much in business such as "e-mail", "e-commerce", "e-business", "e-solutions", etc. As an employee pointed out, it was fortunate that my call sign ended in twenty four as we offer 24 hour service.

And so it was in this beginning process that we met with a large financial institution regarding a large remodel that we had the inside track on. In the meeting, we explained that we would be starting a new company, Echo 24 and asked if they would give us this business. (Aside: We will always be grateful to a few decision making gentlemen at this institution (their company policy does not allow endorsements) who believed in us back when we were nothing. I know they must remain anonymous, but we know who they are, and this "break" they gave us was huge. Had it not been for the business we did with this company in 2001, I doubt our company would have survived, especially right after 9/11.) At the same time we approached all of our Vodavi Telephony Clients and migrated every single one to Echo 24.

Early in 2001 Lisa and I incorporated Echo 24. At that time, I was acting president, sales engineer, and lead technician. For the first three months we had four field techs and that was including me. 2001 and 2002 were years in which it was very difficult for us to win new clients. Prospects were quite jaded on telecom contractors after the internet bust when so many went bankrupt. Here we were another new company with a new name trying to sell technology services. The story wasn't playing particularly well.

Despite this, in 02 we did successfully sell and install a very nice telephone system at the County Public Defender's office downtown. This was a Vodavi Triad 3 with 140 digital stations, 32 port voice processing system, CTI, ACD with MIS reporting package, and 3 Centrex over PRI circuits. At the same time we sold and installed Silverline Windows new 350,000 square foot manufacturing plant in Marion Ohio. This was a sizeable voice and data cabling project with a Bogen paging system throughout the plant. Both projects were very satisfying to Echo 24 and the clients. Silverline had been very competitive and we hit it off very well with them. They had previously built four other facilities and had bad experience with previous contractors. At the Public Defender, there were many political battles being fought over the telephone system installation and after more than a year of working with the client we finally prevailed. It was nice to hear the consultants who had expressed some degree of doubt in our ability to pull of the project actually compliment us when it was over.

We persisted in our sales efforts, hired Theresa Smith to help develop new sales, and little by little, started to win more new clients. We were making inroads with a couple of major heath care systems and another fortune 500 financial institution. We didn't tolerate mediocrity in our workmanship and word of our reputation was spreading. Not only did we have a reputation for quality workmanship, but we were responding faster than the competition. Customers were calling with emergencies because of their own internal communication breakdowns. The conversation would start with them apologizing for "doing this to us, but." It resulted in us getting a technician or crew on site that day or the next and the clients were delighted.

During this period, I had maintained contact with my former project managers at NaCom; Rich Barnett and Dick Treacle. As we had predicted, NaCom (now doing business under another name) was closing commercial service offices. From my old area, Rich Barnett's was the first to go in June of 2003. As the operations manager based in Kalamazoo, MI, Rich had a dilemma. First and foremost, he and his staff would soon be out of a job. Second, he had $400,000 in new contracts that he was told to walk away from. Rich contacted me to see if there was interest in opening a Michigan office and trying to take over these contracts. As it turned out, there was interest and this was our first expansion office.

By October of the same year, Dick Treacle had been notified that his office was also closing. Dick had a backlog of over a million dollars in new business to be completed through 2007. Echo 24 made an offer to take over the lease on his facility in Bolivar and purchase all of the office furniture, test equipment, machinery, and inventory. The purchase of NaCom assets at Dick's office had been seamless by way of comparison with Kalamazoo; we even kept the phone numbers. By Thanksgiving of 2003, we were up and running in three markets!

Despite the difficulty we had winning new business in 2002, we somehow managed to attain top ten status as a Vodavi Triad dealer in a ten state region. By 2003 we advanced to the top five. We received an invitation to the Vodavi dealer meeting in April of 2004 where we were recognized for our contribution to Vodavi exceeding its sales goal for the Columbus market by over 600%. At the meeting, much time was spent explaining the change to the dealer program. The different Infinite and Triad lines were being dissolved and dealers would become classified as either Bronze, Silver, or Gold. Two weeks after the meeting, I was notified that we had achieved Gold status allowing us unrestricted capability to sell, service, and install Vodavi telephony solutions.

Vodavi has been a valued partner to Echo 24 and we are proud to be a part of their continued success (their stock rose 300% last year and their market share in the industry increased 2%). However, looking back there have been opportunities we have had to pass on due to limitations in the Vodavi product line. When Michael Muar from Tadiran called in September of last year to announce they were looking to sign on dealers for their dealer direct Tadiran America line, he had my attention. He arranged for Michael Connole and Bob Funk to come in and evaluate our organization and confirm we were indeed the type of company they wanted to bring on board.

There was interest; Michael Connole invited Lisa and me to come to New York for a presentation. As we sat through the two days of presentation and discussion, I was remembering back to deals we had to back out of because we couldn't offer a solution with the capabilities that were required. With the Tadiran Coral line, these problems were erased. I came to a realization that signing with Tadiran America would provide a solution that fills many voids in our product offerings. We made the commitment and sent some technicians to New York for technical training.

While it is still early in this new chapter for our organization, I am very excited and optimistic. I am very proud of the reputation we have built and the growth we have achieved. Although Lisa and I have big plans to continue our growth, I never want our customers to stop receiving the same personal attention that we have built our reputation around. The same attention you come to expect from a reputable small business. I know we aren't perfect; in fact I wouldn't be surprised if some of our staff often wonders how we've stayed in business. You see, in this business things change faster than the speed of light; no one is more aware than I am at how chaotic and disorganized things can appear in our day to day operations. Sometimes our technicians, coordinators, and/or sales staff must think everything is a just a total disaster. Fortunately as business owners, we don't gauge our success on such misperception. It is when we see a letter from a customer thanking us for our service or complimenting members of our staff that we understand the value of our formula. Even better, although some of our clients don't take the time or are perhaps prohibited by company policy from putting their thoughts in writing, we continue to see a substantial increase in the ultimate compliments; repeat business.

I am often asked what it must be like to be in business with my wife. My response is always the same. We are a perfect balance. Lisa's a fiscal conservative and I am a risk taker. It is a good thing we have her to keep my risk taking tendencies in check. More and more I realize the value of her forward looking analysis of our financial condition and how her opinions are usually right whether I like them or not. I am not only grateful to have Lisa as a co-owner of the company, but all of our staff. I look forward to going in to work everyday and couldn't think of a better staff to work with. Our staff is phenomenal; our crews are great. I hope you will agree.

Anthony J. Gunter, RCDD
President -- Echo 24, Inc.