Hello Everyone from Pat Tzanis

A few new faces but the old gang seems pretty well intact and not a day older? We get a plastic surgeon join the group?

Brief update: I have been living in FL (Sanibel Island) for over 10 years now, time certainly does fly. Excel is doing well, three times the size since I moved to FL and increasing each year. We have been able to hold the profit margins consistently with the growth. The Company President, Mike Zanolli, has become a strong leader with solid results to his credit. Many of you have met Mike. He has been at Excel for 20 years. We have developed two generations of management and the old guys (40 Plus) are feeling the heat from the younger guys. Where that leaves me in the mix I'm not exactly sure. Grandpa? People always say that I missed something not having kids, I have a company full of them.

When I moved to FL the first two years of setting up remote management (some would say I was always remote) was difficult. We didn’t sell the home in VA just in case it didn't work out! After the learning curve the company began to run better then ever. Instead of me being involved in a lot of the details I play tennis and the managers are forced to solve their own problems. Seems they create fewer problems that way. We are selling nationwide by phone and have sales people in ten cities. In 2011 we plan on adding 6 additional sales people. I travel to Pittsburgh about once every 5 weeks, more if necessary but it seldom is. Last winter I was there once. Nasty winter.

I'm in the process of buying a computer services company solely because the young fellow that runs it (Matthew Reed) is brilliant, he reminds me of Tom. Tom of course is cool, Matthew is a geek. Obviously I get bored just playing tennis. The goal is to get Matthew out of the day to day and 100% focused on where his strengths are. Mike Zanolli will also add this company to his responsibilities and we will move one of our younger operating managers for the day to day.

We have developed several new products, one of which is called IT4CEO's. No, we are not going to make geeks out of CEO's but it is interesting to watch the CEO’s when they realize they and their management (other than the IT guy) don't know their main computer codes, their financial information isn't secure and what their IT people really do all day.

We have a talk called "5 things the CEO MUST know" which we just gave to the first Chamber of Commerce. Boy that room became very quiet quickly.

I had Matthew do an "audit" of Excel IT services 6 months ago and that was the clincher for me buying his company. I was the primary example of what you don’t know CAN really hurt you!

Along those lines, two years ago I had an audit by SBA, “Small Business Alliance”. . .a not so cleverly disguised enforcement arm of Microsoft, Apple and a few other software manufacturers. If you don’t know about this you need to immediately Google: "bust your boss." VERY few companies are in compliance and even if they are in compliance there is a bounty for sabotage. That is exactly what happened to Excel. A 12 year IT favorite employee got into financial trouble and figured he could get a big payday. Our problem started with a “SBA” demand letter for a six figure settlement and then it got nasty! It is a good story and will share it when I see you all next. How to avoid this is also part of the IT4CEO’s.

Some of my best business memories are our meetings and of course the parties. There is no question that some large measure of Excel's success was achieved from those conversations. I hope to see you all soon. I will come up for a meeting or you all should come here for one, like in February! Spend the money on meetings that we are all going to lose in taxes!!

We have sun, beautiful weather and beaches and we actually could meet for an hour or two???

Two new members

I spent last Thursday and Friday in Dallas working with fellow CEO club member Greg Carr. Greg has set up an innovation program at Southern Methodist University where he both sponsors and runs a program to stimulate innovation and entrepreneurs.

The program is really exciting and it was wonderful to see college students with such enthusiastic dreams and novel ideas. We spent Friday reviewing breakthrough ideas and somehow had to narrow down the field to a few winners --- the ideas were quite good and better yet was the enthusiasm and guile of these young people who want to live their own dream.

I run a similar program at the University of Connecticut and I find this is a great way to give back. Greg and I both get a lot of satisfaction and a sense of déjà vu seeing young gifted students wanting to contribute to our society in their own special creative fashion.

I have also been corresponding with our good friend Pat Tzanis, as always he is up to really exciting and crazy endeavors. Pat splits his time between his two homes on Sanibel Island and Martha's Vineyard; on several occasions I have followed his warm weather migration to enjoy our tennis and his incredible hospitality.

I think it's a great idea to add Pat and Greg as virtual members to our DC group. They add much and will post their thoughts along with us. I will try to coordinate our meetings with their visits to the DC area.

Best wishes to you and your family for a happy Thanksgiving.

Here's where we post messages and thoughts

Gang,

I set up this blog for our group and you are all authorized to post messages. Please do -- jump in and share news of interest, questions the group could help with, new books you like, .... anything you choose.

This is our place for sharing and interacting --- I am hoping it is fun and easy.

Have a great day,
Tom