Meatloaf and Guidepoint

We were given a unique award the other day from one of our investors, a private equity firm called Plymouth Management Company. PMC named us their first-ever “Coup de Ville” award winner, which represents their best- performing portfolio company over the past year based on the following attributes:

1. Exceptional leadership by the management team.
2. Exceptional performance to the business plan, including revenue growth, profitability, and positive cash flow.
3. Exceptional increase in shareholder value.
4. Exceptional performance by supporting roles such as the Board, professional advisors, and banking partners.

Here's what our CEO, Rand Mueller, had to say: “It’s an honor to be recognized for our business performance in what’s been a very chaotic market. We’ve been able to overcome many challenges in the past few years – from the sluggish new-car business to the rapidly changing telecommunication landscape – by sticking to our model, which is based on delivering unique, useful and cost-competitive services. Congratulations are due to our employees, customers, suppliers and financial partners – who all have contributed to Guidepoint's success."

As background, the “Coupe deVille Award” was inspired by the words of rock star Meat Loaf in his famous ballad “Two out of Three Ain’t Bad”, where he gave the following advice to listeners (and venture capitalists):

You’ll never find your gold on a sandy beach
You’ll never drill for oil on a city street
I know you’re looking for a ruby in a mountain of rocks
But there ain’t no Coupe deVille hiding at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box

PMC CEO Mark Horne commented: “In reviewing numerous business plans each year, PMC certainly sees its share of empty Cracker Jack boxes, but quite often we do find a Coupe deVille. Guidepoint certainly represents what we look for when investing for our fund, and has delivered on its potential. We are very proud of Rand and his team.”

New Tech Guy

We recently hired a guy named James Woody -- or just plain ole' Woody as everyone calls him. Woody is our new lead Technical Support Specialist at Guidepoint, which means he provides the highest level of tech support and can assist anyone with anything related to installing a Guidepoint. He's been a 12-volt guy for about 10 years, having gotten his start as an installer for Circuit City. He's MECP Certified and, on top of it all, he speaks plain English rather than techno-babble. That's important in our company, where one of our mantras is "We're a service company, not a tech company."

He's already paying some great dividends: He has taken our clunky, 8-page installation manual and slimmed it down to an elegant 2-sided install guide with pictures, charts and schematics. He's also working on streaming video versions of the installation materials and training our CSRs to better handle first- and second-level tech issues.

Of course, Woody has to share some of the credit for simplifying things with the product development team. One of the things that makes our unit appealing to a dealership is the fact that it is simple to install and that there is very little OEM customization that needs to be done, unlike, say, a remote starter. So a dealership can pitch Guidepoint on virtually any make or model and not have to worry about installation issues.

Of course, if there is an installation issue, the solution is simple. Call Woody, who sums up his philosophy this way: "I believe in getting the job done right, the first time, and taking care of our customers."