Richard's GlobalTmail Blog

Re-Opening This Site

This blog was was closed for new articles since last July. This week, I opened it back up again as our public blog. The nature of articles you'll find here from now on will be more geared toward the public, and be of the nature of press releases. I've got a  major announcement I'll be making here tomorrow, so stop back in and check it out!

The new blog site that I opened last July has become a completely private blog site, effective today. Admittance to that blog site is by invitation only beginning today.  It's available only to paying customers of a certain caliber, investors and other people who have a significant impact on our development as a company.  In other words, my private blog is only for larger customers and financial  contributors who have a significant impact on the company.  As in the past, my private blog will be updated several times a week with new developments, future plans and other confidential information.  

As always, your comments and suggestions here are most welcome!  Don't expect updates here every week. I'll be posting articles here only on an "as needed" basis, so feel free to check it out whenever you have time (but don't expect daily postings).  

New Blog Site Coming

Be watching for it!  Sometime in the next week, I'll  publish a new blog site and discontinue most of my posts on this site. This is a public blog site.  But now that we're really beginning to ramp up the Phase I marketing effort, that means we'll begin making much faster progress toward Phase II and completion of the core GlobalTmail project.  As we do so, I'll be announcing milestones and proprietary software and systems that aren't really for public consumption.  For those reasons, I'm establishing a private blog.

This new blog is intended for those who are paying customers of GlobalTmail.  This group includes everyone who paid a fee to us since we started developing a viable marketing system for the company.  This includesthe  Port Incentive Group, the Port Referral Group, the Asset Management Group and especially, it's for all GroupCaller^tm licensee's.   

This will be a secure site that'll require your login and password.  The site is already "up" but it's not yet available.  I'm working on a login system, which should be completed today, that will allow you to access the blog with the same login information as your GlobalTmail account.  Keep in mind though, if you change your GlobalTmail account login information, you'll have to change this login information separately.  You'll get instructions on how to do this to maintain privacy around your access to this blog.

The new articles that I'll pulbish will be much the same as what you're used to reading.  The difference will be that this site is really geared toward those who are actively promoting GlobalTmail as a GroupCaller licensee.  Therefore, I'll have a number of articles devoted to that subject together with special training materials and links.  I'll also be discussing the finer points of using GroupCaller to enhance the profitability for all Licensee's.  

We're entering a new phase of development throughout the summer.  I'm excited that you're part of it. The new blog will also give you better and more direct access to me.  Whenever you have questions or comments I'll be encouraging you to send them to me through the blog site.  It's something I'll stay in touch with nearly all the time, even through my smart phone, which will have a version of this blog installed so I can instantly get messages from anyone with a concern or question.  It's just another way we're trying to provide the best service possible to all those who are making this GlobalTmail project possible.

Check back later today.  I'll be posting another article this evening to update you on the installation of the 2 new servers and whether or not we're able to fire up GroupCaller with the new configuration today.

Installation of 2 New Servers Continues

I'm not surprised that Ahmed has not yet finished configuring the new servers. I just got a message from him that he's continuing to work on it.  Yesterday I installed the new operating system and Jeff assigned the new IP's so that today, Ahmed could do his part. It appears that Ahmed started this morning. It's a pretty massive job to re-configure the entire GroupCaller^tm software system from a single server to operate across 3 servers with each one assigned to a different role, and yet they work seamlessly together. This is actually just the beginning of what I believe will grow to be a fairly large server farm before we even reach Phase II of our marketing strategy.

In the meantime, let me show you at least some of the results from last weeks' efforts.  First, the good news.  Throughout last week, I continued to work on the sales script and modify it to get better results. Better results are measured in terms of two things:  (a) The number of seconds into the script people listen on average before hanging up, which directly affects (b) the number of people who Press 1 to get more information.  Each day I used a new script and each day the # of seconds increased, except for day #5.  That day, almost all calls failed due to a serious problem with the system in which almost 100% of the connected calls played a recording that was so choppy and broken up that it was unintelligible. The result was predictable: Very few responses that day, and the bad technology is reflected in the following graph:

 

We’re following a concept in the sales script that compensates people for attending a webinar. This is a very common and old direct marketing strategy: Give something of value in exchange for the prospect’s time to hear the sale pitch. We’re giving away 2 ports to everyone to attends the entire presentation. Upon registering for GloblaTmail, we award the ports whether they buy the software license or not.  Of course, the graph above represents the only real victory for last week.

On the bad news side of the ledger, I’ll just give a quick summary.  Essentially, 58% of of all connected calls fail due to incorrect handling of the call.  In simplest terms this means that when somebody answers the phone, 58% of the time one of the following events happens:

• They answer “hello” and hear nothing, or
• Before the phone gets to their ear to say “hello”, our recording is already playing..

This graph represents the percent of all connected calls that failed last Monday to Friday:

Add to this the failure to detect 20% of the answering machines, and the times people press 1 but fail to get through (more than 50% of those who press one never get transferred to an agent) and we have a system that isn’t yet ready for “prime time”. 

But, we’re getting closer.  At least we “HAVE” the system now and we’re working on it daily.  I’m anxious to try it out tomorrow and/or Thursday to see what improvements are made by using 3 servers instead of one to do operate the system.  Both Jeff and Ahmed are predicting improvements, Ahmed more than Jeff. I’m just in the middle, HOPING for improvement  but not certain we’ll see as much as we need.  But I’m pretty sure we’ll see at least some improvement in our basic numbers tomorrow.

I’ll have another article posted tomorrow, but maybe not until after we’ve tested the system.  That means I don’t think I’ll write anything until sometime at night.

New GroupCaller Servers Coming Online Tomorrow

I believe we may have chased down the source of most of the issues we've been having with GroupCaller: Lack of Resources.  

We've been using only one server to run the entire thing, but it's such a massive program it really needs 2 or 3 servers to do the job adequately...even now while we're just starting out and before we have done any real volume dialing.  It seems we need a stand-alone web server just to run the application that allows Remote Agents to log in and use the system, plus managers and developers to log in and control the system. This is the part Remote Agents, Managers and Adminstrators will actually see when they use GroupCaller.  This makes sense to me because I expect before too long, we'll have many, many Remote Agents logged in and using the system all at the same time. I wondered how that one server was going to handle all that volume.  Answer:  It can't.  I just learned that the web server ALONE is a major resource "hog", even when only one or two people (or NOBODY) are logged in and using it.  If we add the dialer as well, we'd have to have a much more powerful machine to do the job.  Just learned this TODAY.  (sigh)  

Now I learn that we need a completely separate server for a the dialing functions. In researching the recent problems we've had configuring the system to operate properly, one common theme kept emerging: Separate Servers provide the best configuration. As luck would have it, we just happen to have 3 identical servers, one of which was configured for GroupCaller. Tonight I'm configuring the other two as CentOS boxes so we can use one as the web server, and the other two as dialers.  Ahmed actually seemed "excited" about this! He thought we had access to only one server so he was attempting the impossible.  It didn't work.  He didn't tell us we were trying to do this with too little resources.  Perhaps he hoped that our volume would be small enough it wouldn't matter. As he's learning, we intend to do massive volume.  Eventually, I expect we'll have hundreds and maybe thousands of servers spread across many locations.  For now, 3 will do.

It would be great news if the "fix" to our major GroupCaller problems turns out to be as easy as simply installing two more servers, which are already in our server farm.  I know of some additional issues we'll face due to the research I've done recently. But the discussion today with Ahmed and Jeff has led me to believe the issue of "too few servers to do the job" might just be the root cause of the problem.  

It's ironic. We bought these 3 Dell servers in 2007 for the express purpose of operating the dialers. And now here we are, FINALLY, in 2011 setting them up to be used for their original intended purpose.  I never would have guessed it would take so long to get our own system up and operational.  I hope to have them set up and operational by the end of the night. I'm writing this article as I'm installing the new operating system.  If I do this, then tomorrow, Ahmed should be able to install the system on the other 2 servers, and configure them to operate separately, thereby sharing the resources and (hopefully) ensuring a smooth operation.

I'm disappointed that this will interrupt our attempt at sales this week. But, I'm thrilled to find a solution that just might fix most of the headaches we've faced for the past two-and-a-half months; and to know that the solution has been right in hand all along. and WON'T require another big investment from our meager cash resources.  (whew!)

I'll let you know tomorrow how it goes.  I've also got some stats that I spent all weekend preparing that may all be moot once we get these two new systems operational.  Check in tomorrow afternoon because I hope to have a whiz-bang report for you!

GroupCaller Progress Report

I'm always amazed how fast time flies even when you're NOT having fun. Such is the case with my delay in posting another article. Each day I was certain I'd have some really big news to report; but such is not the case. In the 10 days since my last post, I have spent my full time trying to tune and tweak GroupCaller so it produces a good enough response rate to make a big difference in the sales volume of the company.  So far, that hasn't happened.

Having said that, I want you to understand that we HAVE made progress, and very good progress at that. BUT, it's not enough to turn the proverbial corner.  For example, this week we actually set several appointments for people to attend webinars and hosted 2 webinars with a 3rd this morning at 10 am.  The result from the webinars is we have 2 prospects who have already stated they are buying the Standard Group Caller License for $1,000 each.  They plan to pay us next week. We have 2 others that want to continue more follow ups with Keith and at least one will attend the webinar a second time. We're planning a much more aggressive calling schedule for next week.

As far as the technical aspects of GroupCaller, I made an agreement with Ahmed on the 4th of July for him to complete all adjustments during this past week and paid him extra to do so.  It hasn't happened yet.  That's partly our fault here because it's taking far longer than anticipated to listen to and analyze hundreds of calls.  Altogether, we've made around 50,000 phone calls just trying to get it to work properly, and I expect we might make as much as another 50,000 calls before it's working to my satisfaction. So be it.  Whatever it takes to get this working properly is what we'll do because we know the end result is worth it.

In the past 10 days I have also located 5 additional people with similar skills as Ahmed, and have begun a dialog with some of them.  There's a strong likelihood we'll establish a working relationship with at least one more person with his skill set so when he's not available we'll have one or two others who already know our technology who can work with us to correct problems or make improvements.

Next week, I'm planning to run our first IVR (Interactive Voice Response) campaign. This is the classic voice broadcast that includes interaction with the called party for a response and has no "live" agents. We gather leads which must be called back. The obvious drawback to this system is the fact that we must call people back. You may not know this, but these days, a live person answers the phone only about 28% to 30% of the time.  This means even if we get 100 leads, we'll only talk to 30 of them.  The up side is the fact that we exercise much more control over the intensity of the promotion.  In other words, we can call on the maximum number of lines for the maximum number of hours, rather than having to call only when agents are available and fill their shifts, most of which are part time.  To date, we haven't spent more than about 3 or 4 hours in a single day making phone calls...and only twice did we do more than 90 minutes of calling.  

I want to compare the results of both types of campaigns: IVR and "Live Agent".   We'll see through experience which is most profitable for us.  In the meantime, I'll spend most of my day analyzing our call activity from this past week.  I'll provide a statistical report to you either tomorrow or Monday, depending on when I get the numbers calculated.  I'm hoping to have it done before I sleep tonight so that Ahmed can do some of his work while we're resting here in the USA.  

So, please check back on Sunday and Monday as well. I expect to have articles posted both days.

Making Progress, Not Yet “There”

I know I’ve been silent here for awhile.  It’s because I have been up to the gills in too many things to do.  Here’s a quick run down of what has transpired since my return from Alaska.  First, please know that one of the things I always try to do is have back-ups of everything. Anyone who uses a computer to any degree knows the importance of backing up your files. But it goes beyond that.  What about your software? Here at GlobalTmail^tm, I use literally hundreds of programs for different functions that I perform. Many are just tiny software utility applications, that only support other apps, but they all come together to form a cohesive structure that allows me to do all the different things I’m required to do in the daily course of my activities.

Early-on, I decided to ensure that I always have a redundant computer system at my disposal in the event of a catastrophic failure. During the past several months I’ve had to make use of that redundancy.  Even with the redundant system, it hasn’t been easy. One such case happened in the past week. I returned on Tuesday and spent the day recovering from travel, only to get up Wednesday morning to discover my primary computer system had suffered a catastrophic failure and would not boot.  I spent the entire day trying to diagnose the problem (instead of accomplishing anything for the company).  By Thursday, I knew I had to completely wipe the disk and re-install the operating system.  So I proceeded with that task. It took from Thursday to Saturday to restore the offsite back-ups of all my files, and then began the task of installing software to actually USE those files.  Saturday morning, once again, the system failed.  Once again, I started over and this time did a complete deep system scan for viruses, too.  I didn’t find anything, but evidently I didn’t loose all the restored files (only about 1/2 of them).  So, I began the file restoration again after re-installing the OS a second time.  (Fun weekend, huh?) 

By Sunday night, I was back in the saddle and ready to do business again.  I still have a long way to go with re-installing software, some of which must be re –purchased because the original installation files and/or registration keys were on the failed hard drive and NOT backed up; some of which simply won't operate on the newer Windows 7 system and has to be upgraded.  I’ll deal with those problems over the next month or two.  But then, Monday morning, there was one MORE failure.  My backup, redundant computer system failed; the one that kept me going while I was restoring my new primary system. But its failure was more severe.  It appears the hard drive, and possibly the processor are “toast.'”  I'm thankful it held out until I could get the primary system operational again. 

I cannot restore the old system. This is particularly disconcerting because some necessary software was on that system that I’m not sure I can recover (like the software that allows me to create the videos on our website, and the company accounting software that allows me to issue commission checks, payables and keep track of our finances, and more).  But at least I have all the data intact.  So now, I’m in the market for a new redundant computer system and will need to buy it within the next several weeks.  To tell the truth, I don’t totally trust the system on which I’m writing this blog. I’ve only had it since February, and in that time, it failed at the end of March, and twice again last week. That’s 3 catastrophic failures within 4 months; a dismal failure for any computer.  So, I’m just hoping & praying this system will hold out until I can get a better computer installed and up to speed.

So now it’s Wednesday and I can finally get back to a somewhat normal work schedule.  In the midst of these problems last week, we were still able to make some progress with GroupCaller^tm.  It no longer passes so many irrelevant calls through to the agent.  Also, due to some changes Ahmed made over the weekend, we’re finally getting a reasonable number of “Press 1” responses.  Sadly, all except one of the responses on Monday’s test calling were negative, but it still represents progress.

We have a partially acceptable program that Ahmed created last week that’s a diagnostic tool. It records call progress so we can listen and analyze the calls. Unfortunately, he did not write it to my specifications and therefore its effectiveness is seriously limited. Nonetheless, it recorded 648 calls that were connected on Monday.  We’re beginning to analyze them now.  Although only 6% of the calls have been analyzed so far, I’m already finding some consistencies that can be addressed and corrected.  For instance:

1. It appears that 22.9% of the times the phone was dialed, a “live party” picked up the call and said “hello.”  This is the closest we have come to my expectation of around 28% since we started testing GroupCaller (it was less than 2% before the changes made over the weekend).  So that represents more than a 10-fold increase in the number of people contacted.
   
   
2. Due to the number of people now getting messages, it’s reasonable to begin modifying the sales script.  I started that last night and am recording a new script this morning which we’ll test this afternoon. The bigger through-put of valid calls makes it worthwhile to experiment with the sales pitch until we maximize the response rate.  Thus far, the positive response rate has not been high enough to be meaningful so I have not reported it.  I’ll let you know how the modifications work from today and whether they result in any improvement or not.  The good news is that now, we should be able to make changes to the sales approach every day until we find the right combination that will result in the best response rate we can get.
   
   
3. I discovered the system is NOT recognizing FAX tones and skipping them.
   
   
4. We also discovered a defect in the the routine that captures “Do Not Call” requests when the called party presses “9” to be placed on our internal DNC list. Essentially, the system does…”NOTHING!” That must be corrected today to avoid potential legal consequences.

I hope to complete enough analysis today so I can make a thorough report to Ahmed by 2 pm and make some improvements based on that analysis.  In the meantime, we’re excited about this most recent progress and believe that Monday & Tuesday brought us the best improvement to GroupCaller that we’ve seen thus far.

Today, we’ll finish calling through Utah.  This initial Utah dialing effort has done nothing more than help us correct numerous problems with our software. From all the Utah calls (about 26,000 so far), we only got 2 committed to a webinar. The first one, scheduled by Nate, was inadvertently scheduled when I was in Alaska, so it didn’t happen. The other one, scheduled by Keith Kightlinger, is scheduled for tonight.  Hopefully, the progress we see from today’s changes will result in more attendees in our future dialing efforts.

I remain confident, as I have always been, that once the kinks are worked out of the system and the recorded sales message has been fine-tuned, we’ll see an amazing turn-around for this company and finally begin generating enough revenue to make a difference.  I’ll post at least one and maybe two more articles this week, so please check in again by Saturday.

Back In Utah–Main System Crash–Debug Success

I got back on Tuesday and spent the day recovering from the trip and doing a little work. Yesterday, I had scheduled a test session with Ahmed and one of our Agents, but as soon as we started at noon, my primary system crashed and was not recoverable. We completed that session using my backup computer system. Since yesterday afternoon, I have struggled to recover my primary system without success. As I write this article, I am wiping the hard driver and reinstalling Windows.  This is a major set back for me and will take many weeks to recover since I have to re-install numerous software programs as well as restore all data. I believe my backups were current, except that I may have lost my email backups and contact data. I won’t know about the backups until later today. At least I “have” daily backups -  it’s a necessary thing in this business.

The test dialing session yesterday was successful despite my computer woes. Within 10 minutes of starting, Ahmed was able to locate the main bug preventing the system from operating correctly. We’re going to re-convene at noon today to re-start the test. If all goes well, we’ll run the system for awhile and see if it’s working OK. After this debug session, we have 2 other major issues to correct.  Here are the 3 issues we’re dealing with:

• Irrelevant Calls Transferred:  Many calls are passed through to the agent which should not happen, such as “live” transfers (the called party says “hello” and gets transferred to the agent without hearing the recording, fax machines, busy signals, ringing telephones, dead lines, answering machine voice messages, etc. None of these should reach the agent, yet all of them and more do. This issue was debugged yesterday and will be tested today. I’m confident we’ll resolve this major problem today.
• Incorrect Timing To Start Pre-Recorded Message: We’ve all experienced this – you pick up the phone and there’s a delay before somebody answers (that’s usually a call center). If the delay is too long, most people just hang up. We believe there are serious problems with the timing of the start of our recorded message so this has to be corrected before we can expect good results.
• Answering Machine Detection:  Right now, I think we’re only detecting about 1/2 of the answering machines. We should be able to achieve 95% or more eventually. This is the lowest priority to fix and we should still do “OK” even if it takes awhile to get this corrected. Wasting time on voicemail & answering machines reduces the volume of business we can do.

Ahmed has committed to work closely with us this week with a goal of correcting enough of the above issues so that by Saturday, we’re able to conduct successful dialing sessions and schedule a reasonable number of people into webinars for the time and effort spent.  I’ll keep you posted on the progress today through Saturday.

In the meantime, I’m working on my other PC and hoping to get it restored today.  (sigh)

Greetings From Alaska!

Well, here I am in the 49th State! Even though this is a personal trip for the 40-year reunion of my high school graduating class of 1971, I’m continuing to do some work in the early morning and late night to stay up on events back home.  This morning, I’ll be giving Ahmed the green light to start writing a new program that will help us better analyze the call results and progress of GroupCaller.  Although the system is up and running, it still isn’t working properly and needs to be fine-tuned much better than it is. Ahmed will be writing a program that allows us to record and/or listen to each call from the very beginning of the call till the end. I thought this capability had already been built into the system because it’s an essential part of ensuring that each call is crisp, clear and that the pre-recorded message plays to the right people at the right time.  I was wrong.  That’s being corrected starting today, so I expect by the time I get back, we’ll be able to use it.  So far, GroupCaller has not performed at an acceptable level to create sufficient leads that would make it profitable to use.  But that’s normal when first using a system like this. 

I also want to welcome Michael Muir, the newest member of the spearhead team that’s making it possible to run GroupCaller at peak efficiency.  He’s the first to hire a Proxy to make sales on his behalf.  I believe he also wants to try his hand at the Remote Agent position, but that will likely come later.  For now, he’ll start by having one of our dedicated and experienced Proxies taking calls and following up on his behalf.

As far as my Alaska trip goes, it has been great so far! I traveled on Wednesday, had a long lay-over in Denver and finished a long flight to Anchorage at about 4:00 a.m. Thursday, Utah time (2:00 a.m. Alaska time).  An old friend picked me up and I got about 4 hours’ sleep at his house before we spent the day seeing people and looking around the Anchorage area. By the time we finished at about 1:00 a.m. Utah time (I haven’t yet made the time zone adjustment), I was completely exhausted.  Today is Friday and we’ve got a full day of activities, including some 4-wheeling on ATV’s in the wilderness around here (my friend owns the local Polaris ATV dealership). Tonight is the first of 3 events planned for the class; essentially, it looks like a 3-hour cocktail party. I expect to bump into a lot of old friends. 

Who knows? Maybe I’ll even do a little business up here b/c everyone likes to talk about what they’re doing for a living at the present time.  I’ll get another report out Saturday or Sunday and let you know if Ahmed is making progress on the analysis program.  Also, check out the pictures I’m posting of this trip.

Metaphor: Car is Built, Engine Installed, But . . .

I often try to explain things in terms of metaphors. In the case of GroupCaller^tm, I’m excited to report that it’s up and running and we have even been able to schedule our first attendee into a webinar as a result of running it!  BUT, as in virtually all roll-outs of software, we have to consider this the “beta” version until it’s working smoothly. 

I like to compare this process to that of building a car.  The car is all assembled and the engine is “in”.  But it’s running rough and the the transmission won’t make the wheels turn.  In this kind of situation, the car looks good sitting in the driveway, but it’s not going to take us where we want to go.  First, the engine must be tuned so it’s firing smoothly on all cylinders, then the transmission has to be fixed so it engages and turns the wheels whenever you shift into Drive and press on the gas. THIS is where we’re at with GroupCaller^tm. 

Last week, we used the system every day and we got the tiniest of response.  But we also got a lot of good statistics and information from running it that will help with fine tuning the system so it will produce the results we expect.  This is a technical matter and must be resolved as a team effort between Admin (‘me’) our sales team and our programming staff. 

Specifically, there are 2 things we must adjust and correct:

• Incorrect Call Transfers:  When the system calls, it’s designed to play a recorded message and ask the called party to “Press 1 to speak to a ‘live’ agent.”  Under that scenario, the Remote Agents “ONLY” get calls from people who actually pressed a key on their phone, requesting to talk to somebody.  Right now, the agents get plenty of calls transferred but most are the wrong type of calls: 
• Voicemail greetings from the called party’s voicemail,
• “Live” transfers when somebody  picks up the phone and says “hello”, and
• “Dead” calls . . . a call is passed to the agent but nobody is there
• Failing to Play Message:  When a “live” party picks up the phone, they’re supposed to hear our recorded message.  The current statistics indicate that such is not the case. After studying the numbers, it appears that (a) people pick up the phone and hear ‘nothing’ from us, or (b) fully 2/3 of the calls we make fail to go through (which might be an issue with our VoIP provider more than the program itself.

Although it’s very exciting to have this powerful new marketing tool at our fingertips, it’s also very frustrating that it doesn’t yet work the way it’s supposed to work.  This is no surprise. We’re well aware that it takes a fair amount of fine-tuning to get most complex software applications to work exactly as designed.  This is no exception. 

I’m happy to report that we’re working on these corrections daily.  On Friday, our programmer in Pakistan was advised of the issues and today I expect to hear from him with a few modifications to the system.  I’ll continue to keep you advised as much as possible this week as the programmers and remote agents continue to work through the bugs in the system.

In the meantime, I’m planning to travel to Alaska on Wednesday as I mentioned last week.  I’ll take my laptop computer with me so I’ll remain in contact, and expect to monitor and help to operate GroupCaller^tm while I’m gone.  “The Show Must Go On!” as they say, even if I’m out of town for 6 days .  Hopefully, I’ll be able to stay up on this blog even when I’m traveling. 

D-DAY = Dialing Day!

How appropriate is that?  Today, June 6, is the day we recognize the biggest single amphibious land invasion in history.  The Allies landed at Normandy to begin the process of liberating France and the rest of Europe on this date back in 1944.   Each year, this date is recognized as the anniversary of the start of that battle that turned the tide of World War II against the Nazi’s and started the Allies on the road to victory in Europe.

And TODAY, is the first day that we declared GroupCaller^tm completely ready to use and started a pre-scheduled “live” dialing campaign.  Because of this DIALING campaign, I’m calling today our own “D-DAY” (in our case it stands for DIALING Day).  That’s because this is the day that I believe the “revenue tide” will begin to turn in our favor starting today.  I expect we’ll start growing a steady revenue with this GroupCaller^tm campaign.  It’s specifically designed to create exceptional cash flow for the company AND for countless Associates as they join us, buy their Remote Agent License and begin working the system.

Just like the original D-Day invasion at Normandy, the road is long and hard.  But, we established our own metaphorical beach head today.  Cannot retreat, we can only move forward, and we’ll do it with haste.  We know the basics of running our new system now.  It works. But not everything worked perfectly today, just like in the battle for France in 1944.  But enough “went right” that I’m more convinced than ever that 2011 is '”our year” to develop our first steady and growing income.

Our biggest challenge right now remains the VoIP provider.  We filed a complaint with them today. We also established a test account with a large direct competitor of theirs.  We simply must have a reliable and working VoIP provider or we won’t be able to do any voice broadcasting.  Compared to the difficulties of getting to this point in our development, this problem is very minor indeed.  I expect it to be resolved tomorrow or the next day.  At any rate, even if the resolution comes down to switching to a different provider, “so be it”.  I have checked on pricing, and the wholesale VoIP providers are all quite competitive.

I expect we’ll end this week with some calling statistics and with at least a few commitments to come to webinars.  We’re scheduled to conduct a webinar tomorrow night and have a commitment right now from one of our Associates to bring several people to that meeting.  I’m hoping to give the first “live” demonstration of GroupCaller^tm in action during that meeting.

Please continue checking in here.  I’ll be posting more reports this week and let you know how the start up of this massive voice broadcast campaign is going.