Experience

Sports Monster

• Spectator Sports
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Owner

  • Jul 1994 - Present

  Having played in a number of other leagues and captaining multiple teams a season, I felt that I could do a better job than what was being offered at the time. When it came time to leave Harland, I looked at entrepreneurial options. One was to continue to work with financial institutions and the other was to start league programming. Although I am positive I could have made a heck of a lot more money working with financial institutions, I went for quality of life and started Sports Monster in 1994. Starting from nothing, I grew the company into one of the largest in the country with active operations in 14 cities at its peak. Effectively managing employees and contractors required establishment of initial employment policies, contractor guidelines and operations handbooks which have changed as the business evolved. A requirement of my position is to manage employees both in-person and remotely.to perform to their best ability. We have an average tenure of 5 years for full time employees, which is excellent given this tends to be a high turnover business. For vendor relations, I have been able to forge long standing relationships with vendors to run the back end of the business. For the front end of the business in securing partner facilities, I have been able to establish a reputation so good that facilities actively seek us out. Starting any business is a challenge with customer service. Running an emotional business like a sports league requires a commitment to adhering to policy, making sure the policies in place are fair and current and being able to communicate with people effectively when they may not be reacting as rationally as they would normally outside of a competitive atmosphere. Sports Monster is still one of the country's largest operations and maintains a high standard for operations including paid refs, adhering to printed policies/rules and providing excellent customer follow-up. Show less



Harland Clarke Customer Engagement Solutions

• United States
• Financial Services
• 700 & Above Employee

• Regional Sales Rep

  • Jun 1988 - Jan 1994

  Went through sales training program which, at the time, was considered one of the best for college grads going into financial institution sales. Started in northern New Jersey and transferred to the Chicago market after 2 years. Arriving in Chicago, I was given a failing territory that totaled $250,000 in annual sales. In under 4 years, I had turned the territory around and left with total annual billing at over $2 million and was responsible for 3 support staff. Of note, this total was through small institutions usually billing between $15k-75k which required a lot more hands on interaction than a few larger accounts as other reps had. I became the leader in the Company for de novo/start-up banks with contracts for over 90% presented new business. Success through consultative selling was my forte in recommending products/services I truly felt would be a good fit for a specific customer instead of whatever the flavor of the month was to be marketed. Upon leaving the company, I had many former customers ask me where I would be going and offered to be of help to me in the future if I did my own thing - which I did and I did go back to my customers to give my own company's business as I always feel that loyalty is important for trusted relationships. Show less