Heroes in Business - Stephen Stokols, CEO Boost Mobile 4Billion company, 8Million subscribers

Episode Date: September 29, 2022

Build it and keep going. Stephen Stokols, CEO Boost Mobile 4Billion company, 8Million subscribers is interviewed by David Cogan celebrity host Heroes Show and founder Eliances entrepreneur community.  

welcome back to alliances heroes where heroes in business align to be part of our super community and find out more about alliances visit www.alliances.com that's right and welcome back to the show too and thank you keep the feedback coming i got recent feedback already coming when i interviewed the founder of mNBC. So make sure that you go to the only place where entrepreneurs align, alliances.com. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com. So let's get started with our next guest. What a background he has. It's phenomenal. I mean, we could spend like hours just talking about his career, but we're going to talk about what he's doing now. So welcome to the show, Stephen Stokols, CEO of Boost Mobile.

That's over 8 million subscribers and over $4 billion in annual revenue. So you can reach him by going to BoostMobile.com. All right. So, I mean, Stephen, you've got just such a phenomenal background and stuff. Why don't you just kind of quickly just highlight some of those things and then where you got to where you are now today? Because it's, yeah, you've got a phenomenal career. Yeah, I'll make it quick. I appreciate it.

Might be overhyping it a little bit. But I got a unique blend of sort of both startup and big company experience. So currently, I mean, I'm CEO of Boost Mobile, as you alluded to. It's a big company, thousands of employees, billions of revenue. Prior to that, I actually started a company, raised a couple hundred million dollars in financing

for a digital-only MVNO, Telco, called Freedom Pop, which sold in 2019 uh and prior to that you know a very senior exec at british telecom and then i actually started an online dating company so like i said it's a mix of entrepreneurs and a big exec uh which is really it's a little atypical generally it's kind of one path or the other but i think kind of the blend is maybe better both right absolutely i mean. I mean, from going to startups, executive roles, I mean, really across the board. And I mean, you know, this is a big role now that you've got a CEO of Boost Mobile. Like you said, I mean, thousands of employees managing $4 billion in annual revenue. Yeah. Hopefully more than that as we grow.

That's right. And you will after this show because more and more people are going to know about you and know about Boost Mobile. So again, make sure you go to BoostMobile.com. So talk to us a little bit about the creation of Freedom Pop. Yeah, so Freedom Pop was actually born out of, so as I alluded to, I was the pretty senior executive at British Telecom in the telecom space. I was the pretty senior executive at British Telecom in the telecom space. I left that to start a company that essentially was meant to be a speed dating platform for recruiters where recruiters could vet candidates. We opened it up to the public. And before I knew it, I had 10 million people using it for dating. So unbeknownst to myself, I ended up being the CEO of a dating company, an online dating company back in 2007, 2008, when video was first emerging.

Sold that in 2007, and then really Freedom Pop was a convergence of telco and digital. It was the first sort of web co, I called it. We took all the stuff I had learned about online, digital, the online dating space, the armpit of the Internet, really. It's very competitive. Married that with telco to create an Internet business model. We were giving away free voice, text, and data, and then upselling people on value added services and freedom properly took off. You know, millions of subscribers ended up going global. We expanded to Spain, the UK parts of France. And like I said, that was the first real digital only telco.

We sort of created the blueprint for what now exists today, where you see a lot more going online and less and less going offline. Boost Mobile obviously is going to follow that same trajectory. All right. So now let's talk about Boost Mobile. And again, we've got Stephen Stokols with us, CEO of Boost Mobile, over 8 million subscribers, 4 billion in revenue, boostmobile.com. And of course, you're watching, listening to me, David Kogan, host of the Alliance's Hero Show. So talk to us about now Boost Mobile, because exactly what is it? So Boost Mobile is a wireless provider. Now, what makes Boost unique is two things. One, we have much lower pricing than Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T.

Significantly lower in the tunes of 30 foot. We got unlimited plans that would cost $60 or $70 on the big three for $25, 25 bucks a month. By far, BS, no gimmicks. There's no strings attached. It's 25 bucks a month unlimited. So significantly cheaper and more compelling. We actually are riding on the backs of the big networks. So we have deals with T-Mobile.

We have deals with AT&T. So you're getting the best of those networks depending on where you're at, at literally half the price. That's phenomenal. And so as you continue to grow, do you have other added things that will be added on or that people can add on and that? Yeah, absolutely. That's a good question.

Because when we look at it, we say, look, we're coming in with the no frills, the lowest price on wireless you can get. Why are we doing that? We're not making much money on wireless., the lowest price on wireless you can get. Why are we doing that? We're not making much money on wireless. We're actually passing on wholesale costs, essentially. But what we hope to do is be able to establish relationships with the customer and then start selling or upselling additional value-added services that are really unique. And to give you an example, we launched a healthcare product, digital access telemedicine. So free access to a doctor 24-7 plus an AI sort of diagnosis. And again, if you're a Boost Mobile subscriber, you get that for five bucks a month.

Otherwise it would be 15 to 20, or even if you go to some of the Walgreens, et cetera, that can be as much as 50. So we're basically coming in and saying, look, we're going to give you basically at cost telco services that you can get cheaper than anywhere else in the market. And then we'd like to start providing the right services that customers want across areas that are specific to us. Telemedicine obviously relies on your phone. It's integrated. It's seamless. There's cases to move into digital banking on top of that. So we're looking to actually expand. Privacy and protection is one that we're going to launch in the coming weeks as well. We will have integrated into the service the ability to block spam calls, protect yourself from hackers.

So those are the types of services we want to get after. I was just going to ask you about that, especially with all the political texts that I get, multiple ones a day. We've got to figure out a solution for that, Steve, and you've got to figure it out. It's coming. So we are weeks away from our privacy bonus again. Five bucks a month and you're going to get protection. All that spam call, you get all the political stuff,

all the, all the, uh, analysts trying to sell you, uh, some penny stocks, all, all screened out.

And then more importantly, you hear about the Coinbase hacks and people say like, Oh, you'll have protection from all the hackers, et cetera. So this private solution, it's common, it's needed.

Customers want it, but that's exactly the type of service that we want to be able to kind of upsell and by giving you a you know yeah so so that's coming and uh absolutely i'd write a blank check for that just to have stop that annoying stuff so i can get actually my text that i'm expecting from people and the calls you don't even have to do that it's gonna be five bucks a month and by the way you're probably gonna get the first months you know the first three months will be free. And how does somebody then go about it? Do you have stores or do they do everything online?

How does that work? So that's a good question. So Boots Mall actually has over 4,000 stores across the country. Now, most of those stores are in sort of urban markets. You look at Houston, Chicago, L.A. So stores are NFL cities. But we've got over 4,000 locations and we are growing the digital business.

When I took it over less than two years ago, Boost Mobile had a very anemic, if any, digital business, but that is now growing at a pretty rapid pace. So we are getting much better online and ultimately the direct-to-consumer online play is really where we're going to prosper. All right.

So Steven, some of the questions that we had when people did look up and know your background and stuff is, given your wealth of background and leadership roles that you've had, very extreme successful career and startup, and now, again, CEO of a $4 billion company, what's the common thread that you learned that you got so good at what you're getting at, and how can others learn that?

Yeah, that's a great question. So there's some commonality, whether it be a big company or a small company, right? And one of them comes down to what I call the details. And it's not the Steve Jobs cliche getting into the details of the product, but it's really sort of understanding the details of what's going to make something successful. So, for example, if we talk about Boost Mobile and $25 a month, $25 a month is a headline proposition that is by far the most compelling in the market. That said, why is everybody not on your show and not running to go get it right now? You should be if you're a rational economic thing. And so details are how are we actually going to get distribution in place, how are we going to get that offer in front of your audience beyond the show? And making sure there's a plan that relies on sort of detailed execution to not just have the headline proposition in the offer

and assume they're going to come, but actually really understand end to end all the details that make a company successful. And whether it's a big company or a small company starting off, and to be honest with you, many small companies fail because they don't think in that. They think the product is so good. They think the proposition is compelling enough that they don't have to worry about those details. But a small company, any successful small company has had to worry about the details. Many big companies don't because they're massive and they got a lot of people and they're fragmented. So really that end-to-end detail is kind of what the common theme across big and small that's required for success. is kind of what the common theme across big and small that's required for success.

Yeah. And Stephen, too, says we want to know, too, the secrets that you share. And I saw your son walk by. The secrets that you share with your son also about what things he do to make an impact like you have made an impact. So I don't know who that kid was behind me. That's not my son. I'm just kidding. That was my son. So the secrets I share for him to have an impact, that's a damn – now you're getting into parenting. This is a contentious area right here. But to be honest with you, like, it's very similar to what you'd share with an employee because from the – I mean, it's not really a secret. It's the same stuff you hear athletes saying, bosses, workers, anybody who's successful, which is it's the work ethic and the hard work.

So my son, for example, he plays football. He's a quarterback on the JV team. He's my son, so he's not going to be gifted athletically, although he's pretty athletic. But, you know, he's got to work harder than everybody else. And in business, you're starting a company, you've got all the disadvantages. You don't have the resources. You don't have the scale. You don't have the might. You're going to have to work harder than everybody.

And in the case of Boost, it's the same thing. There's a big gap between us and number three, AT&T or Timo. Huge gap. They've got more money. They've got more customers. They've got more resources. To close that gap, you're going to have to work harder and outwork people. And I think ultimately, I don't care where you look whether it be tom brady lebron james every

successful sort of situation you look at that person has worked hard lebron james he's a physical beast but he also works hard that's why he's arguably the best player it's not just because of his physical talents so so that's really from a parenting perspective really what I focus on too. Absolutely. Well, I got to tell you, Steve, you work harder. You've made in telecommunications your career. You drive innovation. You've driven to great heights in the field. That's a hero. Employing so many people too. And with that, again, CEO of Boost Mobile, over 8 million subscribers. By the time we're done, it'll be 9. And $4 billion in annual revenue.

So you know where to go. And you know what? It's affordable. Lower than all the others. So go to BoostMobile.com. This has been David Kogan with the Alliance's Hero Show. Appreciate it. David, you've got to dance with me.

That's right.