Owner Builds TelNet after Key Decision to Never Serve Another Boss

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Sponsor Profile: Mike Howard of TelNet

By STEPHANIE TIPPLE

Growing up in a military family with his father in the Air Force, Howard, also known as “Mike the Phone Guy,” had decided on the career path of architecture, a far cry from his telecommunications role today.

“When I was in high school, I was studying to become an architect. My goal was to become an architect. And I went, because as every 17-year-old, we always know best, and after going I knew that’s not what I wanted to do,” Howard said.

Realizing that a life of blueprints and building design were not for him, Howard veered to a pursuit close to his family roots, joining the Air Force at 17, where he had his first exposure to telecommunications.

“The second day after joining, I realized I made a big mistake. I realized it was going to be a long four years,” Howard said.

After spending four years in the Air Force before being honorably discharged, Howard moved to Florida where his parents had entered retirement. Spending a little over a year working and going back to school, Howard was offered a position at the National Security Agency in Maryland, bringing him back up to the Washington area. Working for the NSA for eight years proved to be a positive experience for Howard, but he decided he wanted to give it a shot at working for a mom and pop telecommunications business.

Signing on to work at a small telecommunications firm in Maryland, where he established his technical background, Howard worked hard to transform the company and to help it grow.

“I helped the owner build his company from me being employee number 4 to 42 employees. We were the third largest dealer for telecommunications product at the time,” Howard commented.

“During the latter part of my five- years with that company, I had the urge to do sales. I liked the technical process, but there was something about the sales process; the meeting with customers, solving problems and all of that,” Howard said, which led to his first sales job at Lucent in 1996. “I had a pretty high quota to hit, but I was there for four years and did very well,” Howard said.

Gaining his sales experience, Howard felt it was time to take the reins, and approached his former employer, who agreed to open another office in Virginia that Howard could run, which was located in Fairfax.

“In the first year, we did close to a million dollars in business. I was able to bring in 10 employees,” Howard said of his initial success in the firm’s new office.

Running into some snags with the new branch, Howard moved to Falcon Communications in Manassas where he served as VP of Sales, until he was laid off in the Internet bust of the last decade – a moment that changed the course of his life forever.

“I went into work with my son, who was 3-years-old, and I was let go that Saturday. That weekend, I told my wife I was never going to work for another person – I was going to do this my way. I was going to serve customers, I was going to help them in the best way I can and provide what I believe is the best service I can offer,” Howard said. This was a scary time for their family, as his wife was also unemployed and they had just given birth to their second child.

“That weekend I came up with our logo, and the name – real simple – TelNet, an abbreviation for telephone and network, and come Monday morning I got a business license and I started officially moving forward,” Howard said.

“We grew quickly. The first year we did about $100,000, we scraped by – it was terrible, but we made it through that – and then we went to $400,000 and $800,000 and $1.2 million,” Howard said, going on to say that the 2008 crash put the company in a place of hardship and loss, but Howard helped redirect the company to survive the crash and come out on top.

“Today we are in a growth mode – I’ve been blessed to have great employees and better than that even, I have great customers,” Howard said of his thousands of customer’s he’s served in the company’s 12 years.

Howard’s focus for his telecommunications company, TelNet, has always been to know their customer and differentiate themselves from the competition.

“We are a technology company for businesses. We provide telecommunications products – hardware and software for a business,” said Howard.

“What’s different about our company versus some of our competitors is that we don’t just represent a product or a specific manufacturer. Coming from the service end of the business, so often I’d witness how people would buy things because they were sold. We have multiple manufacturers that we represent so we can truly approach our customers and educate them on all of the options that there are,” Howard said.

And TelNet has done this, not only working to win the Northern Virginia state cabling contract for seven years, but also winning the Inc. 5000 Award.

While his path has been long and in many places, very difficult, Howard reflects positively on the choices he’s made and all that he’s accomplished in his career and with TelNet. “I am truly grateful for all of the opportunities I’ve been given,” Howard stated.