Name: Joe Reed
Opening Date: December 22nd
Location: Delhi, Ohio
Q: Where did you grow up?
A: I grew up in Cincinnati, just five
minutes away from the store I just opened.
Q: What was your career before franchising?
A: I have spent the past seven years
working in the wireless industry.
Q: How did you learn about Wireless Zone?
A: I actually was hired on to run their
first location in Cincinnati and then was brought on as a partner about a year
ago. I started as their manager in 2010 and in 2011, I was offered the chance
to become part of the franchise.
Q: How did you perform your due diligence?
In other words, how did you conduct your background check on Wireless Zone?
A: My business partners out of Columbus
did the research. After a lot of the research I decided that this was the best
possible brand. The proven track record of the brand being that it’s the
largest nationwide Verizon franchisee made this an easy decision for us.
Q: Why did you decide to open your own
business?
A: Wireless Zone has a proven method
and a way where you’re in business for yourself but not by yourself. They get
you up and going and it’s nice to have the benefit of having our own warehouse
as opposed to if it was just a regular store, you’d have to buy directly from
Verizon. Being a franchise of Verizons Largest national indirect franchise, we
are able to be a full-service one-stop shop. We can take bill payments and are
able to sell the iPhone. All those are benefits of being a Wireless Zone franchise.
Q: What was most appealing to you about
joining a franchise system as opposed to starting your own business?
A: It’s nice to just succeed, seeing
the store finally open, seeing it do well when it does open. It’s nice to make
your own schedule, have the flexibility to do what you want, when you want.
Q: With regard to your previous experience,
what skills do you feel helped you in your business?
A: The team building, the corporate stuff
that we went through. It takes a little while to get into that side of things
to where you can figure out what drives people, whether it’s money or
recognition, responsibility whatever it may be. With Delhi, I wanted to put a
store in Delhi being that this is the community I live and grew up in. Once a
westsider always a westsider. It’s the only wireless store in Delhi, there’s no
other wireless store in Delhi. We are only 10 minutes from downtown Cincinnati,
on the westside.
Q: What are your hobbies? What do you like
to do for fun? What activities do you enjoy on weekends?
A: I enjoy hanging out with my friends
and playing cornhole in different areas across the country with the American
Cornhole Association. I don’t get to play as much as I used to unfortunately
because I have been so busy with getting my franchise up and running. I have
played in tournaments all over the country. Americancornhole.org.
Q: What did you find most appealing about
the mobile communications industry?
A: It never gets boring, something’s
always changing. There’s always a new phone coming out with all the new
technology. I’m a techie nerd, so knowing about the new phones before they come
out is pretty cool.
Q: How many jobs is your location going to
create?
A: The Delhi location has created 5
full-time jobs and one part-time job, all local people from Delhi. Alicia
DelCupp is our manager and currently working on her masters at Xavier
University and Steve Smith is our Assistant Manager currently working on a BA
at the University of Cincinnati. Having great employees makes the stress
tolerable.
Q: What obstacles have you overcome to get
where you are today with your business?
A: I’ve had to work lot of hours to get
to where I am today. I worked at Radio Shack and then I worked at T-Mobile
corporate and spend a lot of time working, learning the industry. All of this
has forced me to sacrifice spending time with friends and family.
Q: How does your business connect with the
local community?
A: We donate money to sponsor many different
teams. We plan on donating money towards the Anderson Ferry Food Bank which is
a food bank. Hiring within the community was big for me as well. I am a big
believer in doing business in your own community. We want to keep the tax
dollars local.
Q: What are some of your achievements
(professionally or personally) that you think will help you along the way in
your business?
A: When I was at T-Mobile, I won
multiple awards that only the top 1 percent of the company’s sales people, it’s
called Winner’s Circle. That has done me well over the course of my career.
Knowing some of the people in the industry, I know people that work for other
wireless providers that call and talk about best practices. There are other
franchisees that we can call and ask questions and nice to just get an opinion
from someone that’s out there and they know what you’re talking about.
Q: What are your expansion or development
plans?
A: We would like to have five locations
by the end of 2012. We have one new location that we’re working on right now as
long as we can get the logistics worked out in our favor.
ABOUT WIRELESS ZONE
Founded in 1988 as "The Car Phone Store", Wireless Zone has become the nation's largest wireless retail franchisor and was ranked the No. 1 franchise in its category by Entrepreneur magazine. Every store is independently owned and operated, exclusively offering Verizon Wireless products and services. In 2010, has grown to more than 400 locations thanks to its recession friendly and finance friendly model. Wireless Zone is a division of Automotive Technologies, Inc. For more information, visit www.wirelesszone.com.
