BBW Consulting Services

Much to my surprise and everlasting gratitude, I had a couple of people come to my rescue after I tendered my resignation from Bell. You never know who you might have impressed along your professional journey. Colour me shocked, to have both Gary Leitch and Al Hobbs contact me to ask how they could help.

Both Gary and Al were former bosses of mine – Gary in the DMS department and Al later as I became integrated into the IT world, as a manager. Both men were not ones to suffer fools and pulled no punches in their quest for results and professionalism among their subordinates. I didn’t think either of them cared for me, to be frank. I had never developed any type of a relationship with them other than purely professional.

Me? A Consultant???

I thought a consultant was supposed to be an expert in some given area. I always felt I was more of a generalist in multiple areas. I was about to fool ’em again!

Now that I was about to become a “consultant”, I needed to establish a company. Both Al and Gary immediately reached out to assist me in navigating the nuances of setting up a corporation. But I needed a name to call my company. After trying several names on the government database, everything I tried was already in use.

What to do? What to do?

I settled on a combination of my name and my sense of humour – and called my company BBW Consulting Services – Big Bad Wolfe. I had several people tell me that it would be embarrassing if I was introducing myself to a VP while soliciting business. But the funny thing is, I was seldom asked what it meant, and when I was, it was generally with a chuckle. People tended to remember BBW, and eventually came to associate it with morals and ethics as I got into the IT Staffing space.

BBW became my calling card literally and figuratively.

Gary Leitch had recently left Bell as part of a “downsizing” the company was going through. We were given a window to leave, in which we would receive a buyout, or an early pension. He reached out to me to say he had landed a consulting gig in Switzerland. If I was interested, he could bring me along. I was overwhelmed. Me? In Switzerland?

I would have to be gone for a month at a time, and then a week home. It was intriguing, but I struggled with being away from home that long. As it turned out much later, Gary and I worked extensively together a few years later, on another project in New Jersey.

A couple of days later. Dave Thompson called, with what turned out to be a career changing opportunity.

I had options.

Dave had been working with with Nortel, on assignment from Sygma. At the time, Nortel and Bell had the same CEO, Jean Monty. His vision was to have Nortel get into the telecom business providing long distance services. There was a Nortel campus in Raleigh, North Carolina called Research Triangle Park. It was there, that a new NOC would be built to monitor the burgeoning new network.

The project was in its infancy in late 1999. As luck would have it, Dave and his wife Lynn, were awaiting their 3rd child. Dave wanted to take a parental leave to be with his new son. But he needed to find a capable replacement to handle things for 6 months while he was away.

Hearing through the grapevine that I had left Bell, he called me at home and asked if I would be interested in filling in for him. We had worked extensively together and had a common respect for each other. After briefly discussing, he indicated there was a conference coming up in early February in Orlando. Sygma would fly me and my wife down for the conference and we could meet some people and gauge our interest. He insisted I had nothing to lose.

I met some fascinating people while in Orlando, and my interest was piqued. It seemed to be something I could do – and even if it didn’t work out, I would get six months of experience of consulting internationally.

The Negotiation

As it turned out, the opportunity was too good to turn down. When I got back home, Dave’s boss called me one evening, while I was at the arena. I took the call in the lobby.

“I would like to have you fill in for Dave while he is away. I have never hired a contractor before. How much do you want to be paid”, she said.

“I have never been a contractor before. I don’t know what to ask for”, I responded.

We settled on a number that felt fair, and I booked my flight to Raleigh, North Carolina for the following Monday – having NO IDEA what I was doing or expected to do.

Learning the Hard Way

I was soon to learn the hard way, about how to enter the United States to work! No one at Sygma had thought to educate me on crossing the border. On Monday morning, I was excited to fly to Raleigh, though nervous as hell, not knowing what I was getting into. I flew from London to Toronto as I had so many times before. But now I was going through immigration.

Agent: “What is your purpose in coming to the United States”

Me, chest pumped out and proud as punch: “I am going to Raleigh to consult with Nortel”

Agent: “Please step aside”.

Me: ??????????

Many hours later, I left the interrogation room at Pearson Airport, with my tail between my legs. I had missed my flight on my very first day – an inauspicious beginning. A few days later, Sygma had produced the correct paperwork for me to receive a TN Visa, allowing me to travel freely between Canada and the US.

Note to self: “Careful what you say at the border”!!!

The following week was a blur. New people, new jargon, new buildings, new city. It was overwhelming. I said little and listened a lot.

On the flight home Friday evening, I took out a pen and paper and started writing my observations. Over the weekend I emailed my boss.

The email started with “I don’t know what your expectations were for me this week, but I wanted to share my observations”, followed by what I had seen, heard and felt. There were certainly some politics going on – a lot of push and pull between Nortel staff and the Bell/Sygma interlopers.

Much to my surprise, the following day I got a phone call from my new boss. I was nervous and had no idea what to expect. She simply said “whatever we are paying you, it is not enough. Would you accept xxxxx?” Well DUH!!

Well that started well. Who knew all you had to do to be a consultant, was to observe and give your opinion. LOL. I soon found that I was mostly outside the bounds of politics. If you were a “consultant”, people automatically thought you knew stuff. My opinion mattered, and there was little pushback. I loved it!

When Dave came back from his leave, Sygma became CGI, and they kept extending my contract for several years. I felt like a carpetbagger.

Life was good.

The People

Along the way, I met so many people that had a hand in my later success. Kim Lee was a middle manager in Raleigh. Short, round faced, a big walrus mustache and as abrupt as he was sarcastic. He was a master at politics. He once said to me “if you ain’t got grit in your groceries, you ain’t from around here”. A true North Carolinian!

I once sat in a meeting with him, where things were a little contentious. He suddenly slammed his fist on the table, stood up and walked out, stunning everyone. No one knew what to do, so I walked outside to find him. He laughed and said “Ah that was just a little performative bullshit to get their attention”. Well it sure worked.

Kim owned a BBQ restaurant nearby as well. While I never made it there, I asked him how it was going one day. His response “if it weren’t for the people, it would be frickin’ fabulous.” We butted heads more than once, but he was a good guy in many ways.

Kevin DeLivera arrived in Raleigh from Melbourne Australia, to see how a NOC was built and operated. Kevin and I discussed how amazing it would be for me to go back with him to Melbourne to assist in the building of a Nortel NOC, similar to the one we had in Raleigh. Alas, it never came to be, but Kevin and I became instant friends. I called him my “evil twin”. Such an amazing human being!

We resonated from the moment we met, and remain in touch still today. There were many hi-jinx together, which will remain our secret for lots of reasons! His daughter Merryn came from Australia to live with us briefly on a university exchange program in Guelph, and brother Mark came for a visit as well. My one and only trip to New Zealand and Australia, involved a several day visit with Kevin and his family in Melbourne. It was easy to fall in love with Australia and will forever be one of my favourite places to visit. Sadly, I have never made it back.

All good things must end and it was becoming apparent that time was running out on my run of good fortune.

Shift in Direction

Nortel was cutting back on consultants. It was to be a harbinger of things to come. Dave, Sharon and I were given the option of our contracts being terminated, or becoming employees. Against our better judgement, given how messed up Nortel seemed to be, we all accepted full time roles as Nortel employees. I negotiated deals for Dave, Sharon and Tom Calow – a sales guy that I had become close with – to become full time employees of “the mothership”. The pay was very good, but it was clear this company was a disaster waiting to happen.

Things would be very different from this point forward. John Roth had taken over as the new CEO and the company was spending like drunken sailors.

The Wild West

Dave was sent to work on one project, Sharon and I another. Nortel was a disaster. They were growing so fast, pulling people in from so many different backgrounds, that it was hard to keep up. We were now part of what was called GPS (Global Professional Services). Hundreds of people were being hired every day and sent to work on different projects all over North America. People would come and go almost daily. Each project I was assigned to was mired in politics and diverse opinions, from strong willed individuals.

We were a mix of Americans and Canadians. Some very senior, others trying to find their way. It was a diverse group of men and women, gay and straight, Muslim, Jew, Christian, Indian, Black, Caucasian, Korean, Japanese and others too many to list. We were thrust together in a sometimes hostile environment. Under these conditions, you quickly learn we are more similar than different, and for that experience I am eternally grateful

To be fair, each of us came from different telecom backgrounds, with deeply ingrained processes and procedures. To wit, we all had our own ways of doing things. Together, it was hard to come to consensus on anything given the various backgrounds and commitments to what people knew and were comfortable with.

After all, as human beings we gravitate to what has made us successful and what we know works. The problem was that there was little continuity.

There was no top down leadership, so it was up to us to figure it out. People were being hired so fast, that it caused tremendous churn, As result there were promotions, new management and thus an inability to maintain any sort of stability. New promotions brought new ideas. New ideas, often conflicted with the status quo. It was like the wild west.

Then rumours started to circulate that the company may be in trouble.

In the meantime, I sometimes didn’t know where I was going to be until the weekend before I was to leave.

I was in Colorado one week, Chicago another. I spent several weeks in Minnesota, in the dead of winter – that was pleasant. Then off to New Jersey to the “project from hell”. Every Monday flying to work. Every Friday flying home for the weekend. As much fun as that may sound, it is anything but. Airports, taxis, car rentals, hotels, restaurants, work – rinse, repeat, recycle. Travel for work is not for the faint of heart. You are either hurrying, or you are waiting!

Everyone was trying to avoid this project, but I ended up spending 18 months in Eatontown, New Jersey. During this time, the stock market crashed around the “tech bubble”, shortly after 911. It was the worst experience of my entire career. The pressure was enormous. I learned through these tough months, that through adversity, one makes life long friends.

To those friends and colleagues I spent time with during these months, I say THANKS for helping me survive.

I wrote previously about the Nortel days, The Nortel Days – Wolfeish Musings , if one is interested in more of the gory details.

Many of these friends became instrumental in my future.

Soon it became public knowledge that Nortel was “cooking the books”. Combined with the catastrophic impact of 911 on the world’s economy, it was clear this was not going to end well.

Thousands of people were getting laid off. In Eatontown, we were working with a company called Tycom. They manufactured fibre optic cables and laid it across the ocean floor to connect North America to Europe and beyond. Nortel had sold Tycom “vapourware”, software that did not yet exist, to streamline their processes. We were onsite at their factory, trying to deliver a platform that was in the process of being developed – while pretending that we had things all under control.

As parts of the project were being delivered, people responsible for those deliverables were being summarily laid off. Since I was on the Quality test team, I was one of the last to go. Seeing the writing on the wall, I started to reach out to people I knew, to find a landing spot for myself and others.

As it turned out my brother from another mother – Rick Seys – was a General Manager at Bell Canada by this time. He was in charge of a multi million dollar IT project and needed consultants with experience.

Rick bailed my ass out so many times, I lost count. We shared many anxious moments together as projects sometimes teetered on the verge of disaster. One or the other of us, often required a listening ear to share our individual burdens of the moment. Privately, there were many tears shed, as pressure mounted and anxiety became too much to bear at times.

I started sending people to him to fill critical gaps in expertise. When my time came to leave Nortel, Rick had a spot waiting for me – another lucky break in a series of lucky breaks.

Soon after leaving Nortel and landing on my feet (AGAIN!) as a consultant at Bell, another opportunity presented itself to me.

Now instead of travelling to the US every week, I was travelling to Toronto every week – back to the future! Still travel, but home was reachable in an emergency.

The Mentors

Along the way, yet more people had an influence on both my personal and professional life. Road life was difficult at times. Many life discussions were shared over dinners and the odd cocktail. Lori Smith, Deb Alcatrao, Pam Mitchell, Vita Windrim, Peter Ylipelkola, Dave Soteros, Kathleen Lewis, Joanne (Joey) Cirullo, Lynne Poirier, and so many others had both large and small, yet significant impacts on my life during these years.

I can’t begin to articulate how much I learned from these people and the friendships that I developed and maintain in many cases still today. Extraordinary times, tend to pull extraordinary people together.

Rick’s project had partnered with Accenture, a huge multinational consulting company out of the US, to deliver a $60M project that would have far reaching implications on Bell’s network services. Rick required his own consultants to ensure Accenture was kept in check. I happened to know a few that were looking for work – but how could I benefit from this arrangement?

Enter Jeremy Mason. Jeremy worked for an IT Staffing company called Ajilon Consulting. Staffing companies were in their heyday in the early 2000’s. The industry was booming and they were making a killing on providing IT professionals to companies going through IT business transformations.

I met with Jeremy – a former Londoner as it turned out – and we hit it off. He agreed to cut me in on part of his margin, in return for providing him IT professionals, that he in turn could place on multiple Bell projects – Rick’s in particular.

BBW Consulting had now become an IT Staffing agency on the side. I continued to consult with Bell, until I had enough contacts of my own. The goal being that I could stop consulting and focus on continuing to build my own Staffing agency.

Once again, another lucky break.

John McVey, Kent McNeil and Brent Ho Young, split off from Accenture and formed their own company, called DonRiver. John was from Chicago, Kent from Dallas and Brent, Toronto. The three of them had the charisma, business acumen and network to make a go of it. They became tremendously successful in the following years and now do business all over the world. I became close with John in particular and followed him to Dallas for six months, while they launched a new mobile phone company, serving south Texas. It was fascinating, but time to come home.

For the next 20 years, BBW Consulting went from working through Jeremy Mason, providing resources to Bell, to having our own clients – ScotiaBank, RIM/Blackberry, Rogers, Canada Life, Northwestel (in the Yukon), AT&T, Bell South and many others.

xiBOSS – The Final Chapter

In 2016, I was approached about merging BBW with a competitor in Toronto, called xiBOSS Corporation (pronounced Ziboss). I became a partner in the new organization as we combined forces to build the business.

Geoff had been working with me since 2011 and he fit in perfectly with the xiBOSS team. With his hard work and perseverance, we became a major vendor for Canada Life and several others. This resulted in outstanding revenues for the company and the bottom line was blossoming. With that came interest from other larger companies approaching us to sell.

In September of 2022, SI Systems, out of Calgary, made an offer that could not be refused. The business was sold.

……..and I retired.

Just like that, after nearly 50 years in telecom and later Information Technology, my career was over.

I have been truly blessed, both with opportunities and the many friends that helped me along the way.

No man is an island. We all need help along the journey we are taking.

I have had more than my share.