Leadership

John Wassenbergh, Principal Owner — Age 57, married, five children
John has been in the telecommunications industry since 1972 and has earned a reputation as a builder. He is well known to the end user community and enjoys an excellent reputation with them and with his peer group. Former employees and co-workers have high levels of confidence in his business sense and leadership ability and often follow him to a new company.

After spending some time with New York Telephone Company in the early and mid 1970's, John joined Jackson Communications in New York City as a sales executive in 1979.

During his fifteen year tenure at Jackson, John was rapidly promoted through the organization and, in 1991, became an owner of the company.

Jackson, like many of the local operators of the period, was faced with an inability to profitably sell new telephone systems to the business user as it simply did not possess the critical mass necessary to buy at the best price or create significant volume with the manufacturers it represented.

John changed the business model at Jackson from that of a sales company to that of a service/maintenance company, capitalizing on Jackson's traditionally strong reputation with the end user community.

The new service/maintenance model required little capital expense; created incremental revenue without incremental cost; and enabled Jackson to leverage its existing cost structure so as to be highly competitive in the after-sale arena.

Using this model, John moved Jackson into new markets in New England and added $24M of high margin, recurring, revenue to the company's books in a two year period.

Given its market footprint and the high operating profit derived from the excellent margins in the service/maintenance business, Jackson became an attractive acquisition target for larger competitors and was eventually acquired by Wiltel Communications Systems (a division of The Williams Companies) in 1994.

Subsequent to their acquisition of Jackson, Wiltel retained John and made him an officer of their company, responsible for all business operations in the Eastern United States.

John remained in this position for three years, executing the customer service and maintenance model for Wiltel in his territory. For that three year period, John's territory generated the highest profitability; lowest DSO; best customer and employee retention; and most significant revenue growth; of any of Wiltel's six operating divisions.

John left Wiltel in 1997 to accept a position with Shared Technologies which, at that time, was a regional operator with five offices generating approximately $50M in annual revenue, and was marginally profitable.

In the period 1997 to 2001 John, using the same successful business model, grew the business to twenty-four offices nationally, and, approximately, $140M in annual revenue, generating an 18% EBITDA. John was also responsible for the sales, technical, and administrative staffing of these new offices and for establishing favorable and long term business (distributor) arrangements with Nortel and NEC, among other manufacturing partners.

In 1999, 2000, and 2001, Shared Technologies was recognized by Nortel as its fastest growing business partner nationally, and was rated highest in customer satisfaction, among all Nortel partners, in Nortel's own customer surveys.

Shared was acquired several times by larger, CLEC type, organizations in the period 2002 through 2006, each acquisition damaging the company's reputation and disrupting the business model.

In November of 2006, John left Shared Technologies and worked as a consultant until forming Sound Communications.

Bud Deaton, National Sales Vice President — Age 51, married
Bud has been in the industry for over 30 years. During his career he has gained vast experience in all aspects of the business, beginning as an installation and service technician and consistently expanding his responsibilities so as to eventually manage both the sales and operations organizations of a national telecommunications organization.

Bud began his telecommunications career at Henkels & McCoy, which, after several mergers and acquisitions, eventually became a part of Shared Technologies Inc.

Bud managed the sales organization in the Philadelphia market for Shared Technologies and was eventually promoted to National Sales Vice President for that organization.

Bud left Shared Technologies in 2005 to found Creative Telephony Solutions (CTS), a secondary market equipment provider based in Friendswood, Texas.

Bud enjoys building a sales organization from the ground up and is equally successful in selling directly to the end user, or as a leader and mentor to a team. Always focused on profitable margins, he has proven abilities to properly construct the transaction, help his team achieve designated goals, close business, and maintain excellent working relationships with his customers and employees.

These attributes make Bud a perfect fit for National Sales Vice President of Sound Communications Group, Inc. He joined the company in that position in March of 2008.