Excel Phenomenon: The Astonishing Success Story of the Fastest-Growing Communications Company -- and What It Means to You

Book Description

How It Happened, Where It's Going,
and Why It Matters to You
This is the story of a remarkable business opportunity, one that is open to all and is as simple to grasp as a telephone handset. It's about good old American ingenuity. It's about offering consumers a better deal. It's about people helping people. It's about accomodating and strengthening a family while working for financial achievement. It's about false starts and missteps, too, but in the end the brief history of Excel Communications, Inc., is the ultimate American success story.
If you believe in challenging conventional wisdom, or if you're looking for reassurance that ideas still count in our society, this story is for you. Old assumptions crumble. New ideas emerge. Opportunity abbounds. Think about it: For nearly a century, there was only one phone company, and almost everyone—scholars, economists, politicians, business executives, and consumers—just assumed that was the way it had to be. Then in the early 1980's the breakup of the AT&T monopoly opened an opportunity for a young entrepreneur to realize his dream.
That dream is Excel. In less than ten years, Kenny Troutt and his partners have grown their dream into a $2 billion corporation. They've created an opportunity for a million people to start their own home-based businesses, ones that allow them to spend more time with their families. Many have acchieved satisfying degrees of financial independence and security. Some have become wealthy.
Virtually all credit Excel with bringing their families closer together and giving them the financial security they never thought possible.
The dream is open to you. Find out more about it inside The Excel Phenomenon.

Customer Reviews:

Definitely a title to keep on your "personal success" library shelves..........2007-02-18

The Excel Phenomenon certainly has had its detractors. Doubtless, there are handfuls of people out there in Bookland who have been through the rigours of "Excel U" but not fared nearly as well with the product and the "system" as some of the prominent personalities featured in this book, proud of them as we are. Lookit, I'm slightly skeptical about this read, ok? The author makes a clearcut attempt to distance himself from CEO Kenny Troutt and the people at the top of the Excel Communications foodchain, yet (and for this, folks, you'll have to give it a solid concerted read) he waxes majorly poetic on the merits of the company, how it functions, the nitties-gritties 'n all, and this book appeared to me to basically be a primer on all things Excel-like. A posterior-smoocher.

I'm not saying that I minded it. I'm also not saying that it's unacceptable. It's just that if an author's going to state his bona fides, and then masquerade his copy as shilling for the principals of the company he writes about, I'd have to say that mightily stretches the bounds of belief just a wee too much for this reviewer's taste. Just be forthcoming. If you're going to boink me, then boink me properly is where I'm going with this.

Okay, so enough about the demerits of this book. On the positive side of the ledger, I enjoyed the "slice of life" portraits of the people whose lives were changed by Excel. It's heartwarming to read about real people going through real economic day-to-day crow. This isn't a rags to riches sort of thing. Some of the people described within these pages toiled at Excel for a long time and didn't necessarily see a profit return for, like, well...ages! It took them YEARS to build up a steady business and clientele, and in the meantime, like the rest of the working-stiff population, they had to take on menial jobs to make ends meet. Many of these profiles described were two-child families, with spouses who **both** worked. To read about how they ultimately managed to triumph and make it boldly back to the black is quite a remarkable achievement.

Will this encourage other people to emulate their successes? Hard to say. I recommend--at the very least--reading this book in order to, at first, glean some of the feel-good cream which will get you thinking differently about your lifestyle. I'd reckon to say that many of the people who get through Robinson's book will be jazzed up enough to want to go out and make a mega-change in their lives, and what's more, the bulk of the people who are reading this are typically in a "I wanna change my life mode." (Sure, there are people just reading it for reading its own sake...though not too many of those, I doubt). I hazard to recommend any one given book at the "silver bullet" solution as a source of motivation for readers. THE EXCEL PHENOMENON is precisely the same. Don't look to it as a "Bible" of sorts to glean all possible inspirations for the direction you think your life should be going. DO, however, look to it as that, perhaps, **final** book you're going to read that will propel you once and for all on that path through life which will ensure that you've got a steady stream of income which will prevent the need to have to alternately scrounge around for it constantly in dead-end jobs, working for "da Man," or possibly even getting stuck in an earn-spend lifer trap that nets you little in the way of positive net worth.

Robinson, through the device of Kenny Troutt and his cronies' Excel, shows you at the very least that a way certainly **does** exist in order to remove yourself from this dead-end matrix of taking out of your pocket what you toil and labour hours to earn.

The book's written in a no-nonsense style, easy to read, and I found myself liberally jumping between sections as a way to spice up the read. That's my indicator of a good piece of non-fiction, I'll have you know.

What the author is basically positing here, I believe, is that business phenomena like the "Excel phenomenon" are going to become increasingly more important in the early 21st-century. With the explosion of telecommunications products, and as more and more data gets pumped down that line, like TV and other wireless services, there will be many more people getting rich off of these products.

I didn't award this book the top ranking, only because I think that the author wasn't entirely forthcoming about his connection to the relevant Excel brass. It's hard to believe with something this seemingly rah-rah that there wasn't some kind of clever artifice and assorted payola in the mix here. Sorry, but just my $0.02.

Otherwise, it was a rather spirited read.

--ADM in Prague

A political communicator as the author.......2005-01-17

Many of the reviews seemed to consider more the network marketing aka MLM in general than the book itself. I think that the Excel Communications was a very well timed and well implemented business idea that worked.

Unfortunately, I cannot say the same about this book. Especially the first half of the book is painful rhetoric about the glory of Excel Communications. Somehow I had a feeling that the author was a professional writer, maybe a journalist. I could not believe that any journalist would write as one-sighted text as this book, and I checked the background of the author: a veteran speech-writer and political communicator. Well, that explained a lot.

The book repeats over and over the same positive claims of working for Excel: Be your own boss, be with your family, and with the hypocrisy of a Miss World candidate the story that although I make a lot of money, the most important for me is that I can help the others to succeed as well.

When you open the book on an arbitrary page, you get the feeling that the book includes facts as there are so many numbers and dollar signs. By reading the text, the reader notices that 95% of the facts are irrelevant like how much the person earned before joining Excel or how much one can gain by saving 20 years with 8% interest rate. The latter fact got 3 pages in 225-page book. The other facts were mainly related to the environment or society, not to Excel. The book had also some relevant facts like how many percentage of the Excel representatives succeed or fail, but those facts have to be dug out from a lot of noise around them, and in those cases the facts are not statistical from the Excel book-keeping but individual opinions.

What I was missing are the facts:
How much of the Excel income come from the telecom services and how much of it comes from training and other MLM supporting services.
How many customers Excel has compared to the representatives.
How Excel is sharing the customer revenue between the person who sold the service, the person who recruited that sales person and Excel.
How a typical representative income stream is composed, how much comes from getting customers, how much customer calls, how much recruiting others, how much from recruited persons recruiting new ones, and how much of training and managerial tasks.

21 years old and almost financially free with Excel.......2004-01-19

This was a recap of the history of Excel. If growing to 1 Billion in sales faster than any company in history doesn't impress you maybe this will. I think that most people who bad mouth this book or MLM in general have failed themselves. Maybe only a small percentage of people find financial independence in MLM, but that's the same deal with any new venture. Those that fail have quit, because the only way to fail in Excel is to quit. If your new Micky D's franchise fails, does that mean that Micky D's doesn't work. I think the problem is, YOU DON'T WORK. People by nature hate blaming themselves. I am 21, a university student and well on my way to never working again for the rest of my life. If you want to learn how, i'll tell you my big secret, I WORK!

An Excel Rep, Biased but Financially Free.......2004-01-19

This book was obviously written to not only to give a historical view of the company but to promote it to others. Excel and network marketing are amazing in the way they give motivated people the opportunity to have money and time freedom. I am a 21 year old college student and i am well on my way to never working a real job again. Those who are nay sayers or bad mouth this company or MLM as a whole are the ones who have failed. They'll be the same ones after they open a million dollar franchise who fail and tell you franchising doesn't work. I've got news for you, YOU DIDN'T WORK! MAYBE THE FACT THAT YOU CAN'T BLAME YOURSELF IS THE REASON FOR YOUR FAILURE!
Whether its Excel or another MLM company, get in now and never quit.

Good read for those interested in NM........2002-12-20

This is a good book for anyone interested in learning more
about NM and how Excel has grown into a global communications
company. For those that say the company "keeps your investment",
you get your "investment" back if you actually work. The problem
is most folks that join a NM company, they expect to get paid
for doing nothing. This is a business! And it's yours...you
reap the rewards for what you put into it. And for those that
say Excel products are over priced,etc, not true. They are
competitively priced with the larger carriers. Check it out
yourself. Yes, you can find bargains, but that's true with
anything you buy/use. The one review that mentioned market
saturation? Excel is a 2Billion company on what? A 2% share
of the 100B long distance industry. And now there's local! Anyone that bashes this book obviously
has failed at NM (maybe with Excel), but I bet they never put
forth any effort to really build a business.

The Excel Phenomenon: The Astonishing Success Story of the Fastest-Growing Communications Company-And What It Means to You

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The Excel Phenomenon: The Astonishing Success Story of the Fastest-Growing Communications Company-And What It Means to You
James W. Robinson
Manufacturer: Prima Pub
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Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000NXYLHW

Book Description

In this comprehensive reference, Roy T. Meyers provides an invaluable tool for anyone who wants to learn how the government budgeting process works, where it doesn't work, and how it can be improved. Filled with insights and wisdom from thirty-six contributors, this book presents an encyclopedic account of budgeting innovations today. Seven sections and twenty-nine chapters cover everything from current basic processes to the uncertain future of budgeting. Handbook of Government Budgeting is the definitive resource for anyone interested in the ways governments acquire and spAnd money.

Nationally and internationally respected experts such as Bob Bland, Naomi Caiden, James Chan, Philip Cooper, Larry Jones, A. Premchand, Irene Rubin, and Barry White offer the reader a full spectrum of information and ideas gleaned from a broad base of practice and research. The contributors are authorities in the fields of political science, economics, accounting, and management. They include executives, managers, analysts, consultants, and academics who have studied or worked with governments. The combined wisdom of these experts ensures the most concise, complete, and thought-provoking compilation concerning government budgeting today.

Each section of the Handbook of Government Budgeting presents multiple chapters offering different perspectives on budgetary subjects. Topics include: an overview of government budgeting; credit markets, the economy, and budget balancing; taxation in budgeting; the informational foundations of budgeting; budgeting by institutions; politics, management, and analysis in budgeting; and budgeting over time for large amounts. This comprehensive volume will prove a priceless tool to government professionals as well as professors of budgeting courses. Budgeting students and practitioners will find up-to-date information on the latest budget issues and politics in governments across federal, state, and local levels.

The teaching supplement is available directly from the author.

Product Description

2nd Printing. This book presents excerpts from some of the nation's best budget documents. It includes the finest examples of city, county, school, special district, state and town budgets ever submitted to the budget awards program. The author weaves these example into an indispensible and practical guide.

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An in-depth guide to a new and still relatively unknown source of small business loans

In 1992, the Small Business Administration established a new loan program to help women and minorities get their companies off the ground: SBA Microloans, with funding of up to $25,000 available. Here, readers learn exactly how to benefit from this program. Patrick O'Hara, author of the popular SBA Loans, details everything from the application process to closing fees. The book also examines a variety of other specialty loans, including the lowdoc program, green line revolving line of credit, and pollution control loans.

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This digital document is an article from Government Finance Review, published by Government Finance Officers Association on October 1, 1993. The length of the article is 974 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Handbook of Comparative Public Budgeting and Financial Management. (book reviews)
Author: Andrea H. Tevlin
Publication: Government Finance Review (Magazine/Journal)
Date: October 1, 1993
Publisher: Government Finance Officers Association
Volume: v9 Issue: n5 Page: p49(1)

Article Type: Book Review

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Manufacturer: Oxford University
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The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870-1900
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Congratulations CUP for reprinting this!!

The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870-1900
James R. Moore
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

The Post-Darwinian Controversies offers an original interpretation of Protestant responses to Darwin after 1870, viewing them in a transatlantic perspective and as a constitutive part of the history of post-Darwinian evolutionary thought. The impact of evolutionary theory on the religious consciousness of the nineteenth century has commonly been seen in terms of a 'conflict' or 'warfare' between science and theology. Dr. Moore's account begins by discussing the polemical origins and baneful effects of the 'military metaphor', and this leads to a revised view of the controversies based on an analysis of the underlying intellectual struggle to come to terms with Darwin. The middle section of the book distinguishes the 'Darwinism' of Darwin himself amid the main currents of post-Darwinian evolutionary thought, and is followed by chapters which examine the responses to Darwin of twenty-eight Christian controversialists, tracing the philosophical and theological lineage of their views. The paradox that emerges - that Darwin's theory was accepted in substance only by those whose theology was distinctly orthodox theology and of other evolutionary theories with liberal and romantic theological speculation.

Customer Reviews:

Congratulations CUP for reprinting this!!.......2003-10-25

James Moore's brilliant and magisterial examination of the so-called conflict between Religion and Science in Victorian Britain has been reprinted by CUP (Nov 2003) and I've just got my hands on a copy. I'd recommend it enthusiastically to anyone who wants to know more about Protestant responses to Darwinism, Huxley and the 'X Club. It's even cheaper than the rare secondhand copies which is a definite bonus.

The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870-1900

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The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870-1900
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Manufacturer: NY
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Book Description

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