Excel Communcations As A Model?
I saw another mention of Exel Communications on a website promoting Buzirk Wireless. The quote went something like this:
projected to be larger than the Excel Communications boom of the late 90′s…
It’s actually a great comparison, and hopefully Gobal Verge will learn a lesson or two from the final phase of Excel Communications. (And avoid it’s untimely demise).
I was a college student in the early 90′s, and one of my former roommates was signed up for Excel Communications by his girlfriend’s father. Our of respect for my friend, we went to a meeting room at the local Holiday Inn (this was pre-Internet, you see) and sat through the discussion of how Excel Communications would revolutionize the long-distance telephone industry. I suggest you take some time and read through the Wikipedia article on Excel Communications, as it’s a good read, and to be honest, I didn’t know what happened with Excel. The part that is worth noting is this:
Excel Communications was founded in 1988 by Dallas entrepreneur Kenny Troutt as a long distance reseller in the US telecom sector at the birth of telecom deregulation.
In the beginning, as the 432nd-largest long distance company in the United States, it began selling franchises through the business model of network marketing or multi-level marketing (MLM). In seven years, it became the fourth-largest long distance carrier in America and the youngest billion-dollar-annual company in history (8 years as compared to the second fastest growing, Microsoft, which took 15 years).
On May 10, 1996, Excel became the youngest company ever to join the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) trading under the symbol (ECI).
You see, Excel went from #432 to #4 in just a few years. That was astounding, and a great example of now Network Marketing is the original “viral marketing” method. Internet marketers talk a lot about how you need to make your marketing viral and use “social networking”. Excel did this largely without the benefit of the Internet. Truly amazing.
Back to my story – I didn’t enroll in Excel. I realized then (as I do now), that I’m not a natural salesman. The Internet changed that for me, because it allows me to market a product from behind a keyboard, rather than in front of my friends and neighbors 
The lesson that Buzkirk needs to learn is to make sure that the growth is followed by years of nice, stable returns (Herbalife and Amway are both decades old). This will mean reaching out, pushing the envelope and staying ahead of the telecommunications curve.