Be ready with at least one good backup plan

Plans B, C and D needed to start Roam Mobility

It has been said that the best businesses are started by people who suffer from a problem and can’t find a fix for it. But the race from idea to business is long and fraught with impediments.

Emir Aboulhosn of Vancouver was in this situation. He managed to reach his destination by constantly forming alternative plans that got him around roadblocks.

Aboulhosn launched Roam Mobility this month to provide Canadians with cheaper mobile phone roaming rates while they visit the United States, after two years of plan-ning, stumbling, and more planning.

The idea for Roam began to form while he was working as a software engineer. He frequently visited the U.S. for business, and realized the costs he paid to use his Canadian phone there added up to a sizable expense.

Like many entrepreneurs, A boulhosn couldn’t get the idea out of his head. He wanted to create a cheaper way for Canadians to use their cellphones in the U.S. One day, after returning from an expensive trip, he decided to do something about it.

Research showed 18 million Canadians visit the U.S. each year, accounting for 60 million visits. What’s more, 48% of those visitors leave their phones on when they cross the border, which means that most pay the high roaming fees charged by Canadian carriers. Smartphones that use the Internet or email in the U. S. generate even higher fees.

The data pointed to a potential market for any company that could reduce the cost of using Canadian phones in the U. S. Aboulhosn began working on a business concept, loaded with alternative actions if his initial plans and tactics didn’t work.

After storing enough cash for his family to live on — Plan B if his timing was off — he quit his job and started canvassing compatible U.S. carriers regarding the creation of a mobile phone network in the U.S. just for visitors.

AT&T, the biggest of the GSM platform carriers in the United States, wouldn’t give him the time of day. However, another large carrier, T-mobile said it might be interested in the concept if it could get a better sense of the numbers involved — numbers such as vend- ors, potential users and revenue.

But Aboulhosn didn’ t know enough about the mobile phone industry to answer questions. It was time for another Plan B — learn about it.

For more than a year, he pored over relevant documents and interviewed dozens of technical and business experts. Soon he had in place a business plan that laid out a clear path that not only satisfied the carriers’ strict technical guidelines regarding vendors ( there were more than 20 to deal with), systems and other parts of a mobile phone network, but also how to gain access to them.

“With that knowledge — some of which came from T-mobile — we were able to build a network that was unique and more cost effective,” Aboulhosn said. “But for a long time it was like being in a fog. I realized I was ready when I was sitting in a conference room, meeting with some partners. I was coming up with solutions they hadn’t thought of and every other word I used was an industry acronym.”

I realized I was ready when... I was coming up with solutions my partners hadn’t thought of

Aboulhosn, who built a strong development team along the way, may have been in an unfamiliar industry, but he was no reckless adventurer. A mobile telephone network is a complex engineering system with many potential problems. For every step he took in his plan for forming this network, he always had Plan B, C, and even D, in place.

Several times he used them.

“I set up alternative plans for every task, because there were often blocks,” he says. “When creating a business, no matter how hard you expect it to be, it’s 10 times harder.”

Now that Roam is launched, Aboulhosn is preparing for an entirely new set of tasks — he must create a three-to-five-year vision for the company and lay out a plan to achieve it.

Already, he’s forming alternative plans to deal with the roadblocks that will inevitably appear.