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The Brotherhood of ISPs — continued

Others were initially not as supportive.

[CM scoffed] "You are doomed if you have to ask strangers for advice. Find another line of work."

[Brother Jerry replied] "It is those that ask for assistance in areas they know they are weak that succeed. Those that go about things blindly and without proper planning are doomed for failure. The fact that I am already seeking advice from others reflects that I am willing to do what needs to be done and not to let my own ego get in the way. If I were to take my business plan as it is I would fail. Even if I were to get investors, loans, etc I would fail. Because I know as it stands now there are parts of my plan that are not complete. And if I enter into business without a complete plan ahead of me then I am bound to make a mistake.

Many people come to forums, IRC, mail lists to ask questions that they do not know. That is the point of an open community such as this in which questions may be asked. Believe me this is not the only avenue I am taking. But the more input that I can receive from people the more I can ensure that my plan is to work. I cannot see the future, but I can help narrow down what the future is to bring by trying to think to myself all possibilities as well as to ask of others who have been down the road I want to follow. It is said that we learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of others. We can only learn from the mistakes of others if we have witnessed it or ask them about it.

So no I am not doomed to failure. But instead because of my honesty with those around me and my honesty with myself then I know that if and when I go forward I will be ready and prepared.

But thank you for the input. If I fail I will remember that you told me so."

[CM apologized] "Well put Brother Jerry,

My prayer is that you do succeed. My expertise is raising money, marketing, media and direct sales. I have seen many a business plan, as good as they might be two things I know are true:

1. It will take twice as much capital as you project.

2. It will take twice as long to accomplish as you project.

If you plan on this fact in advance...and there is a demand for what you propose, and you can hold your infrastructure together, i.e., the staff you pick don't rip you off, and you can find some good faith investors who know you well and believe in you to the bitter end...you have a 50/50 chance of realizing your objectives.

I am assuming by your title, Brother, that you are a Christian...so I hail you as a brother!"

[Later, CM added] "My apologizes to all in this forum. Caught me at a weak moment. I have personally communicated with Brother Jerry about my misstatement. Forgive me."

[Brother Jerry replied] "Yes he did and with some wonderful words of encouragement and ideas. And for that I have thanked him."

[LP scoffed] "Last time I checked Christ was not on this list, at least he hasn't answered my requests on this list the past 10 years."

[Brother Jerry replied] "I have asked no one for money nor asked for a service that was not freely offered. Advice, wisdom, and experience is all that I have asked for. Parts of the conversation with others have turned towards my faith and my business plans for a faith based company. I have no shame in that what so ever, in fact I am proud to state that I am a Christian and that I want to start a faith based business. And what I do know is that in today's world it is never to late to bring wholesome values to anything."

[LP apologized] "To everyone on the list. I am truly sorry for my ignorant comment. I did not read the thread from the start, and was having an obnoxious day.

I really have no problem with anybody being who they are as long as it does not hurt anybody.

My issue is when Religion and/or Politics get thrown into the mix, the waters always seen to get murky pretty quick, and the real topic of discussion eventually seems to get left behind."

[Brother Jerry replied] "Not a problem buddy. I know how those days go. And no feelings hurt here at all. And I respect folks enough that I am not going to "force" my faith down their throats, but if they ask then I am definitely going to say some thing :D"

[KB warned] "I can offer this one piece of advice concerning 'churches'—please do not take offense, because I mean none.

It has been my experience that more often than not, dealing with churches is a royal PITA. From soaking you on price, to simply not paying, or just bouncing from provider to provider. This does not necessarily reflect on the church/s or congregation/s themselves, but more so on the fact that it would appear that there always seems to be at least one 'PC' or 'IT' wannabe in the congregation who knows better than the ISP and as such takes complete control, and turns things in a different direction for whatever reason.

I guess what I am saying is that 'churches' or just about any 'non-profit' or 'non-centralized' entity is less than reliable as a consistent source of income. Not all, but a great many."

[Brother Jerry replied] "I plan to offer incentives for the church to stay with the service. I may not make as much off of the churches individually, but they provide an excellent source of growth potential for the residential side of things."

Being a church member myself I know that if my Pastor were to mention a 'church friendly' ISP that offers connections comparable to other providers, and no complaints of service, I would seriously investigate and probably convert. And that is the aspect of the residential that I want to capitalize on. I know many folks that have not a clue what provider their church may be on. Why? Because they do not offer anything for the church but a connection. But if that connection was church friendly, then when conversation came up it would be a bonus. I am not stating that pastors should be preaching the service in the pulpit but if and when it comes up...."Our service is filtered for content and the service is great" is a big point for many folks.

I also know from experience that filtered service is not for everyone (the fact that the porn industry is one of the largest industries on the net is proof of that), but here in the South the church is still important and there are many people who would be interested in that. The enterprise side of things is still going to be the biggest money maker, but residential has its nice potential as well, and bigger word of mouth from them too which can leak back into the business side of things. But then, I am sure you understand all of that :D"

[EF asked] "Your goal is noble, but I personally would be shocked if you a. get the endorsements you envision from the churches, and b. there is any significant margin in providing that service (kind of the whole point). For instance, there are likely some churches that have members that provide ISP service today—would the pastor recommend you over someone tithing to his church? likely not. Similarly, I'm not aware of any church in my local market that is comfortable endorsing a particular local business for X service—that's too political for them normally.

Virtual ISP operations are quick/dirty and will get you up and running with little startup costs—I'm not sure how much capital/gear you're going to throw at the startup, but I'd be as virtual as possible if I were you. You can add the VISP's filtering, or outsource to someone else like Kidsnet or someone, but at that point do you have a unique selling proposition? I would say that you don't really outside of the ISO/certification stuff, and without some compelling, unique service or value, I don't see the upside--i.e. why would I switch and give up my email address?"

[Brother Jerry replied] "Thank you for the words and advice. However, let me expand a little on certain aspects of the concept. There are several out of band solutions for filtering that are very effective at what they do. 8e6 comes to mind and I have worked with them before. And I do not know about you but I have a 6 year old that when he hits his teenage years may end up running rings around me and I have been working computers for 20+.

I will find out more shortly when I send out a letter to the local churches (100 of them only) and see what sort of response I get from them. I can then assume that maybe a conservative 20 percent would actually follow through. Another 20 percent would take some working over to get to switch. And on the business end I am also exploring a couple of options with the filtering there as well. There are many great enterprise level filters out there currently. However they are things that the IT dept has to keep up with. If I can provide them a customized 'blocked' page and do the maintenance for them, it is one less thing they have to worry about. Or provide them a portal into the filter in which they can also modify their settings as well. A couple of options to offer there. Both somewhat unique at least in this area.

I feel I have some honest tricks up my sleeve to get endorsements as well. And I have some plans in the works for that as well. But for now that is my secret ;)

I have looked into some VISPs but they do not really offer what I am targetting. Starting there would be lower initial cost but also lower offering. Thus slower to not only get where I want but also slower starting up and with greater risks to end users. No control over network means I am at the whim of the parent for resolutions. And if I get bad service from them it gets filtered down to bad service to my customers. And I do not want bad service.

I have a lot in my head that has not made it to my plan yet...which is one reason I have stated all along I am early in this. I have thought of many of the technical aspects of things but just need to iron out some of the fiscal and operations aspect. I do feel that there is a market for the filtered service in this region, and the I know that some of the other services to offer are definitely needed. But again thank you and I will take what you have said to heart and continue to go over it and follow up with it."

Finally, a business plan started to take shape.

[EF suggested] "I'm familiar with 8e6, websense etc. and if you host that box all you're going to see to filter is the external MAC—how are you going to know Dad (who wants his playboy.com) is not Johnny (banned from playboy.com)? Dad might want a different level of access than his kid...just saying.

I'm also not sure what you mean router resources are not an issue. If you don't filter locally, then you need to put in "the big box" like above (that's what I meant by router) and those boxes are a. expensive, and b. have recurring costs associated with them. Then you'll of course need all the other router/ethernet gear—not cheap.

Check out Kidsnet, they have a client/hosted combo that might be of interest.

Re/ the startup time with a VISP—if you have $, you can have an ISP live in about a hour or 2 with a good VISP shop—not sure how you could do it in-house faster and/or cheaper?

I'll leave you to your work—hopefully you are extremely passionate about this industry and line of work, otherwise it's going to chew up your cash and peace of mind—definitely not for the faint of heart. I'd suggest instead of selling something you think is cool, do some checking and find out from your target market what it is *they* want, and specifically what do they really need that the ILEC/cable co sucks at or has no clue how to do—there are likely gaps of services that people will pay for today and do not need to be convinced one way or the other.

If it was me, I'd be selling before I bought anything—see what flys—then build it as you need to and take on as little debt/investors as possible."

[Brother Jerry replied] "As far as different access levels in one residence. You could actually do this in a couple of ways even with the 8e6 equipment if you really really wanted to do this. You could do it by IP. You could assign two IP's for the household...one for dad and one for Johnny. Dad's IP gets skipped by filter, Johnny's does not. Of course that runs into problems of having to now hand out static IP's, etc. And quite honestly though in an environment such as that I would recommend a system that was installed locally to allow access identified by login information. Because that is the only way to do it if you have but one connection to location and multiple users. And of course advising them that if Johnny figures out how to disable NetNanny or whatever application you are running...then it will not be long before he is looking at the same smut dad is.

By router resources I was referring to boxes like the R3000 from 8e6 which is an out of band solution. It is not going to take up a ton of resources on the network. Expensive I know. But if you want to do filtering or any other service then you are going to want to do it right and not hodge podge and half baked. Recurring costs? You are going to have that with anything you get. Maintenance agreements, etc.

Thanks for the info on Kidsnet I will go check into that as well.

I will re-investigate the VISP thing as potential and I have been keeping that in mind. But targetting some other things that make it unrealistic at the moment. But plans change and focus shifts.

I am passionate about taking this as far as I can. And I pray that will be all the way. Besides the resi ISP side of things there are other avenues of business that are needed in this region. I have been looking into wireless as well and the advantages and such on that front. Still early and am working towards narrowing things down."

— End

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