Kevin Tawil

But like a lot of industries like that, it just consolidated really, really quickly.

So I think certainly by 2000, the top three to five carriers would own 70 to 85% of the market.

So it was clear back in the early 2000s, we were going to be in a consolidating industry.

That's just really the way it had to be for the economies of scale to work for them, which meant

Customer relationship management was going to be critical.

It was always important, by the way, to be working with the acquiring company, because if company A acquired company B, then the vendors and partners of company A would tend to win out as well.

And that worked largely in our favor in the early 2000s.

But we knew then that it was a concentrated industry and we really did two key things.

One was focus on client relationship management, keep them close and keep them happy.

And two, diversify.

So we're always in this search to look for growth outside of the wireless industry or in different areas of the wireless industry in order to lower the risk that comes with concentration.

As it turns out, working within a concentrated industry can be a good thing.

It allows you to focus.

And if you've got a great product and you've done a good job of managing the client relationship so that they view you, your company, your product as strategically important to them, which was one of, again, back to Brett's superpowers, one of the things he was able to do

for us, then you embed yourself in that organization and are able to continue to grow along with it.

We've been successful at doing that over a long period of time in a consolidated industry.

At least a third of his time, if not more, was spent on client relationship management.

I can say the same for myself.

It was important for us to get to know the most senior levels of our clients.

If you're successful at doing that, then you have a seat at the table to pitch them new ideas and to help continue to grow with them and evolve your product suite with them in a way that's more difficult to do when you're down at the mid-levels.