Tanner Montague came to town from Seattle having never owned his own music venue before. He’s a musician himself, so he has a pretty good sense of good music, but he also wandered into a crowded music scene filled with concert venues large and small.But the owner of Green Room thinks he found a void in the market. It’s lacking, he says, in places serving between 200 and 500 people, a sweet spot he thinks could be a draw for both some national acts not quite big enough yet for arena gigs and local acts looking for a launching pad.“I felt that size would do well in the city to offer more options,” he says. “My goal was to A, bring another option for national acts but then, B, have a great spot for local bands to start.”Right or wrong, something seems to be working, he says. He’s got a full calendar of concerts booked out several months. How did he, as a newcomer to the market in an industry filled with competition, get the attention of the local concertgoer?
How small-business owners can conquer telecom bills
by Beth Ewen
Most people think it’s agony to pore over phone bills and access charges and figure out the errors. For Cheryl O’Brien, it’s both an exhilarating challenge and a business. She started Technology Management Corp. of Shorewood 18 years ago, and spends her and her associates’ time auditing clients’ technology bills and systems and letting them know how to save money.
O’Brien tells Upsize that owners can do the light lifting themselves, and she says they’ll love the feeling of empowerment when they do.
Upsize: You do audits of companies’ telecom systems. Is the need for this growing?
O’Brien: We audit all their technology, and the big ones are Internet, long distance, local and data. There’s always been a need, but about two years ago they had the fox watching the chicken coop. This type of thing was rampant: The sales rep gets paid for what they sell, and the sales rep enters the info. Billing errors occur, and they can be fixed. So let’s say you’ve negotiated a discount of 55 percent, but the sales rep puts in 20 percent. The sales rep gets paid on the first three months, and it takes that long for you to discover the error.
Upsize: Why such prevalent bad behavior?
O’Brien: America got so caught up in “We need to show growth.” Everyone was expecting double-digit growth. Everybody was getting pushed from the top down. Not all sales reps are bad, but there are bad actors out there.
Upsize: How did you get interested in this line of work?
O’Brien: I went to college for architecture, structural engineering, and to be a DC-10 pilot. All were engineering-driven and all were analytical. I like to ask, “What’s this? Why doesn’t it make sense?”
I was a design engineer for the city of Minneapolis. My boss said, “Here’s a building, get us into it.” My boss also said, “By the way, get the technology.” I said, “How do you do that?” We needed a phone system, cable center, network, everything. So I grabbed the bills and went to the accounting department and said, “What’s this for?”
Upsize: Do most small-business owners do what you did?
O’Brien: Who wants to delve into the phone bill? There’s this thing called USOC codes. It’s like a foreign language. So they look at the bill and say, “Well it’s about what it was last month,” and they pay it.
Upsize: How often do you find that small companies are over-paying?
O’Brien: It’s very typical. It happens all the time, that they’re being taken to the cleaners. There are two typical stereotypes. The small business will be with a bunch of tiny vendors. The technology won’t work like it’s supposed to; the customer service may be poor. They’re dealing with a little tiny company because they don’t have a budget.
The other type is, they use the tried and true, they’ll use the local telco. All the prices are tariffed but they’re on the wrong tariff so they’re going to the cleaners.
Upsize: It sounds like you enjoy digging into this stuff.
O’Brien: I love math. I have an extremely high IQ. Nothing was a big challenge to me. So I looked for something that I could get my arms around and hang on. I love problems. I LOVE problems. You hand me a network that’s a mess, I’m the happiest girl in the world.
Upsize: Do vendors hate you?
O’Brien: It’s a love-hate thing. I’ve had vendors say they’d pay a client to not bring me in. But the problem is we award so many contract deals that they can’t get around me. I’m going to be in this technology arena until I retire. I’ve had my company for 18 years.
Upsize: How have things changed?
O’Brien: The breakup of the Bell companies was huge. That started competition. It was not uncommon to pay 27 cents a minute back then. Then you had the Internet explosion. It started everything to converge. It was a huge turf war.
Now, people realized these are all zeroes and ones. We don’t care if they’re voice, data …now that everything is zeroes and ones, you can have all the devices on the phone instead of back at the computer. The inventors started going. Meanwhile you’re back to the business owner who’s trying to sort it all out.
Upsize: What about wireless?
O’Brien: That’s going to be a big mess real soon. A lot of small companies rely on their cell phones. Starting in November, I can go to anyone for my phone and keep my number. That’s why in October, a month before this, the cell-phone companies are quietly signing people up for multi-year contracts.
Upsize: So how can business owners get a handle on their technology?
O’Brien: First, find out what you have. What are you paying for? They can take a spreadsheet. The accounting department can put in a big box anything that has to do with technology. Pay it, put it in the box. When they’re done with the month, put it into little boxes. This is cell phone, this is data, these are local calls, etc.
Take cell phones. How many numbers do you have? Who do they belong to? What plan are they on? When people do that they’re always shocked. You can say, do all these people need phones? It’s the low-hanging fruit. Then get on the right plan. Then for the first time, when you get the bill, you know what it is. It empowers people. You should see the look on their faces.
Upsize: What to look at next?
O’Brien: On the local bill: Write down all the phone numbers. Where do they go? Ninety percent might not even go anywhere. If the phone number does go somewhere, is that the best way to get it there? That’s a little more complicated, but still, this is low-hanging fruit.
Then we look at long distance. That gets quite complicated. Divide the calls that go state to state, or interstate, and the calls that go within the state, or intrastate. Then, are they dedicated or switched? Dedicated means you have a T-1, switched means you don’t. If you have a T-1 you bill shouldn’t include switched calls. If you do have switched calls, it means you have a lot of gadgets like a fax machine. That’s expensive when you could run those functions through your T-1.
Upsize: This sounds harder.
O’Brien: Why not have someone like me in to do the heavy lifting? But they can get started. It’s all a big mystery and vendors want to keep it a mystery. From that point forward you can’t fool them anymore. It’s like anything, buying paper, buying technology. Take the mystery off of it.
Upsize: What about Internet service?
O’Brien: If you don’t know what you’re buying you think you’re buying one speed but you’re only getting part of the speed. Every time you do a hop, someone’s getting paid and you’re sharing So ask your vendor: I go from me to you. Where do you go next? Where do they go next? It’s typical to go to all these places, but you have to know what you’re buying.
Upsize: What should business owners do?
O’Brien: I want them to get educated. Be competent. Be willing to ask questions. Do the low-hanging fruit yourselves, then bring in expertise if you need it. Stop assuming it’s OK because that’s the way you’ve always done it.
