James

I grew up in the Middle East most of my life due to the fact that my father was a contractor, and had acquired a job over there after his career in the military. Despite that a majority of people envision the Middle East as a war-torn region, the area I resided in was very peaceful. My city was a diverse community of people from all over the world. I had the privilege of meeting people that had been through so much persecution and so many hardships that at an early age I wanted to play my part in changing the world to be a better place for all of us.

After college in Alabama I moved to Albuquerque, NM to spend some time with my family. I was fortunate to acquire a job as a recruiter at a college, and I did love my job. I did not feel fulfilled though. After giving in to my desires, I opened up a business that works with government programs, to provide telecommunication services to families and individuals that typically would not be able to afford these products and services.

My love for being an entrepreneur started when I was a young child. There was a competition to see who could raise the largest amount of money in 3 days to help support the Bosnian refugees. I came up with the idea for our group to go to different businesses, to have them pay us to ride around with signs of their businesses on our bikes. We were able to convince over fifty businesses to compensate us to market their products, and we ended up winning the competition.I love what I currently do, and my goals are to expand my business to other parts of America eventually.

Our company works with government sponsored programs where we are able to provide discounted, and in some cases free telecommunication services such as internet, cable, and phones to families and individuals in need. I started this business in December 2013 when I noticed that there was a need for a business that offered our services in the Albuquerque area.

I have always been passionate about selling and helping people at the same time, and our business allows me to do this. While at my career as a recruiter at a college, I noticed that many people who were mothers at our school complained about not having internet services for their families at home, and the high cost of their phone bills. As a recruiter, it was my job to make sure that our students were doing good throughout the year, and when trying to reach out to many of them, I noticed that their phones were frequently disconnected. Many of the students at our school were immigrants from poverty stricken areas of the city, and a lack of money seemed to be a constant problem.

After doing some research, I was able to discover that there were programs that were available to help these people, and I could also make a living helping grow these programs. The biggest challenge I knew I would face was getting the word out for the programs, as one of the stipulations is that you cannot advertise these government programs via the standard platforms of advertising such as press, ads, etc. Word of mouth has proven to be a very effective form of advertising though, along with social media.

A majority of our customers are immigrants and low-income families. I couldn’t imagine a more rewarding feeling than the feeling I get when helping out families who are able to go back home with internet for the first time, and now their children can do their homework at home, as opposed to walking miles to the library every evening.

Business has been steady, and the word is growing. We eventually will expand our retail stores to different cities throughout the US, helping more and more families as we grow. We are proud to say we have currently helped thousands of families, people, and homeless veterans with our free services. When someone comes back to me telling me that they were able to find a job or home with the phone we provided them, I just light up. I couldn’t image a better career than the one I have currently chosen for my life.

$7,000 will be allocated towards purchasing the minimum amount of inventory required for our free internet program that we are going to start working with soon, and $3,000 will go towards paying two new part-time employees we are going to bring on to help grow the free phone program. Within a year we project our revenue to grow by 25%, and our profits by 22%.