Mike Schwartz: Keeping Wireless Costs Down

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>> Vince Thompson: Hi, welcome to Dog and Pony. I'm Vince Thompson. Cell phones are a necessity for just about every company. It's enough when purchasing your own wireless plan, but think about when you're purchasing on behalf of an entire company. Mike Schwartz is the CEO of Wireless Watchdogs: a company helping businesses keep their wireless costs under control. Tell us, how do you save money for companies and what are some of the companies that you work with?

>> Mike Schwartz: Anybody who has a hundred phones on up to companies that have thousands of phones. It doesn't matter what industry they're in. We work with them. How do we save them money? It's the knowledge of 20 years in this business and the software that we have created that helps optimize their bills.

>> Vince Thompson: So have you got a proprietary software?

>> Mike Schwartz: We do.

>> Vince Thompson: And this analyzes bills?

>> Mike Schwartz: It definitely helps us analyze bills and it just -- it doesn't just analyze the voice. It analyzes the text. It analyzes your kilobytes that you're using for your Blackberrys these days. It analyzes how many pictures you're taking. So every inch of that bill it is analyzing and trying to figure out the best cost savings possible.

>> Vince Thompson: How did you get the idea for this business?

>> Mike Schwartz: My last business I was in, part of one of the divisions we had, we rented phones to the Hollywood industry. So if you came in a said "I need to rent a hundred phones," and I charge you 10 cents a minute and you take those hundred phones and use them, if I don't buy airtime right I lost money. So I had to develop this software for my own survival. Then I thought about it and I said, "Wait a minute. If it's helping me manage my thousands of phones, it certainly -- there's a lot of enterprises out there that have the same issues." It's an absolute nightmare to try to handle these phones yourself. So that kind of got me into it.

>> Vince Thompson: What's your system for getting into these companies, making your case and getting in business with them?

>> Mike Schwartz: Our service is such a basic service. At the end of the day all we are, we're an outsource for you. Alright? We work for you. We work for the customer. And if I can come into you and say "I'm going to save you 30 percent on your bills. And even after you have to pay me a few bucks and you end up with 25 percent or whatever the number is, in today's economy, how can you kind of turn that down?"

>> Vince Thompson: How much money can you save the average business?

>> Mike Schwartz: The average business that we go in and audit and our audits are free. We run a free audit for all our customers before they become a customer. And the average savings is around 30 to 35 percent.

>> Vince Thompson: How much time does it take me to engage with your company and get the savings?

>> Mike Schwartz: Once you sign up with us, you will realize your savings on your next bill cycle. If I tell you that you're going to take that 7 thousand dollar bill and we do a free analysis and it comes out to 5 thousand dollars, you will see your bill down to 5 thousand dollars on your next bill.

>> Vince Thompson: And how did you scale the business?

>> Mike Schwartz: I went out in the streets myself to get customers. Started one at a time and it just started growing and growing and -- to where we are today. When we first started our biggest problem was "Who are you? How do I know that you know what you're doing?" So the first part was just getting credibility.

>> Vince Thompson: What's the future? Are you going to sell out to a big phone company?

>> Mike Schwartz: I don't know if I'm going to sell out to a phone company, but right now I'm enjoying running our -- my business. And my son just joined me in my business and right now I'm going to keep it in the family and continue to grow and try to make a few bucks.

>> Vince Thompson: What kind of things concern you about operating your company?

>> Mike Schwartz: Really not a lot. I have no concerns that one day I'm going to wake up and the business is not going to be there. Our service is an incredible service that we give. And I don't see it ever going away.

>> Vince Thompson: Mike Schwartz, Founder and CEO of Wireless Watchdogs. Thanks for being here.

>> Mike Schwartz: Thank you Vince.

>> Vince Thompson: It's been a pleasure having you. As always, if you have questions, comments or ideas for guests, we'd love to hear from you. Send us an email: info@dogandpony.com. I'm Vince Thompson. Thanks for watching.

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