154: Starting a Mobile Phone Company in the 80s: Let's Talk Cellular | Brett Beveridge of T-ROC

Brett Beveridge - The Retail Outsource Interview

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Background on Brett Beveridge of TROC Global:

Brett Beveridge is the President of The Revenue Optimization Companies (aka T-ROC). Brett is an entrepreneurial, results-driven executive with over 20 years of experience and success in the wireless and technology industries. He has hands-on success in start-ups, profit turnarounds, mergers and acquisitions, IPOs and fundraising and is the driving force behind T-ROC’s ambitious growth. In various capacities, Brett has been directly involved with the development, opening and operating of over 1,000 retail communications stores nationwide, as well as the management of large-scale, high performance field sales teams.

As a top leader in his field, Brett is the Chair of the Consumer Technology Association’s Wireless Board, which meets throughout the year to discuss critical issues facing the industry and devise solutions. He is the past chair of The Young Presidents Organization (YPO) of Miami, where involvement allows him to foster long-term personal and business relationships and offer ideas and strategies to other business leaders in various fields. Brett is Ernst & Young’s 2017 Entrepreneur of the Year – Florida and holds a 2018 Gold Stevie Award for Entrepreneur of the Year – Retail category. He was honored with the “Powerful Influencer” Leadership Award at the 2019 Extraordinary Women Leading Change 7th Annual Leadership Conference. T-ROC and its brands have been listed on the Inc. 500|5000 lists and Deloitte Technology Fast 500 list multiple years including 2018.

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

  • [0:55] Brett Beveridge is the CEO and founder of T-ROC, which means The Revenue Optimization Company. In a nutshell, TROC is an ecosystem that combines people, solutions, and technology, to help boost sales of their client.
  • [3:27] Brett gives a more in-depth explanation of the services they offer to their client.
  • [6:27] TROC owns and operates their very own retail stores. Some of the stores they own are T-Mobile, Samsung, Comcast Xfinity, and many more. The company can become a dealer of their client’s brand.
  • [11:30] In 1989 to 1990, Brett and his friend bootstrapped their own cell phone company that sells phones in their van.
  • [13:28] At 32 years old, Brett had experienced success with his cellphone company. It grew to about $300 million in revenue and about 300 locations in the US and Puerto Rico.
  • [19:25] There were a lot of strategizing and smart decision-making that kept Brett and his cellphone business on the right track. They started selling in vans until they opened their retail stores and had the opportunity to open a store in the mall.
  • [24:51] Brett’s cellphone business almost failed in the first few months. He has a very interesting story on how they almost ran out of business during this period.
  • [30:49] In 2001, Brett sold his cellphone business to Nextel. He also joined Nextel for several years until he decided to leave and create TROC.
  • [32:49] Building and starting a company from scratch is something that Brett is really passionate about.
  • [34:23] A miscommunication was a costly mistake that caused a huge drop in the stock value of Brett’s company.
  • [41:06] Brett emphasizes on the importance of reputation and integrity when starting a business.
  • [43:59] Brett talks about how everything fell into place when he was starting TROC in Home Depot.
  • [49:12] According to Brett, culture and implementing core values is very important for a company.
  • [51:19] There were several strategies that Brett used to speed up their company’s growth.
  • [53:37] Brett explains how he came up with the idea of creating software to automate some of the processes in the business.

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Fabulous 4 Questions:

  1. 📖 📚 Favorite Book(s)? Mandela’s way by Richard Stengel
  2. 🙌😎 Favorite Amazon.com purchase? Boring but a paddle board rack
  3. 🌱💸 Favorite Tool that's GROWN your Business? Definitely my cell phones
  4. 💭💡 BIGGEST Challenge keeping your Business from GROWING? Low unemployment is a huge challenge. Recruiting and retaining the best talent is our biggest challenge

Key Point from the Interview:

  • “My net worth on paper went from below $100,000 to well over $25 million during that time, so yeah, and I was 32. So it was an extraordinary feeling, did feel unstoppable, and you felt like hard work does pay off and surrounding yourself with great people pays off.”

Resources Mentioned:

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