Rudy Yakym, President, Cyberlink International

To close E-Myth week at ISP-Planet, we interview the founder of a WISP and ask him how Christiantiy, E-Myth, and business work together.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [February 3, 2006]

With its moral, human core, Michael Gerber's book The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It has attracted attention from members of various religions. Gerber says it's attracted attention from the Christian community and the Buddhist community and the Sufi community and others as well.

We spoke to a member of America's evangelical Christian community, someone known to members of the ISP-Lists and to ISPCON attendees, Rudy Yakym president and founder of South Bend, Ind.-based CyberLink International. ISP-Planet readers will remember that we wrote up his ISPCON presentation on how to make money with e-rate in our article E-Rate Pays earlier this month.

We start by talking about the weather, which has been unseasonably warm. Yakym explains that the jet stream has been turning south, down to Florida, and then turning back north, bringing Florida's weather to both New York (where we are) and Indiana.

Then we get to the first question of the interview, about the goal of Yakym's business, we're expecting the religion to feature in the goal and are surprised that it doesn't appear to. "Our goal is to provide a good rate of return on shareholders' capital by providing high quality internet bandwidth at competitive prices with a high level of customer service," says Yakym.

We ask where religion fits into that, and Yakym explains. "I consider myself a conservative evangelical Christian," he says. "My life is grounded in my religious faith, and believe strongly in the principle of second milism."

We don't know what second milism is, so he explains it. It's from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. "The story behind the second mile is that under Roman law, any soldier could instantly conscript any non soldier into action to carry his armor up to about one mile (although it was a different unit of measure). Everybody cursed the Roman soldier when they were conscripted because carrying the armor wasn't part of their own plan. Jesus said, 'do more, go the second mile, demonstrate your servant's heart.' There are many good providers out there operating on the same philosophy."

He says he doesn't talk about religion unless asked. "I don't wear it on my sleeve. I don't whip people up into a salvation experience. That's God's business. Personally, I feel a stewardship obligation. I've been given things, physical assets, intellectual assets."

Has he found his calling? "Absolutely, and I'm having a ball doing it! I'd send myself an invoice for coming to work if I could!"

So now we return to the question of whether religion and money are compatible. Yakym believes they are. "Strong moral guidelines are imperative in any business. If your highest obligation is to make more money, you will do that at the expense of things that should never be compromised. In an extreme case, you'll end up doing illegal things and going to jail."

The business
The company sells business broadband, 1.5 Mbps at $350 per month. "We tell the customer that as long as they behave, we will leave the radio open, so if more bandwidth is available, they can use it," Yakym says. "On the other hand, if they start doing file sharing or misuse the bandwidth, it's within our rights to trim them back to 1.5 Mbps. Other people might say, 'let's bleed the customer for every penny we can get,' but we don't do that, and we get referral business as a result. We feel good, they feel good."

CyberLink International runs a call center from 8 AM to 5 PM, with one person on standby at home until 9 PM. "We used to have somebody here at the office until 9 PM, but we set it up with call forwarding so they earn a stipend to be on call, and most of the time, they just kick back and watch TV. Our people love it."

The improvements
"Had I read E-Myth Revisited ten years ago, I would have done things differently," admits Yakym. "I didn't know how to set specific objectives for people or hold them accountable. When I read the book, it was like I was reading an exposé on everything is doing wrong."

Yakym's being more honest about himself than most CEOs we talk to, so we return briefly to religion, asking him about humility. "There's no room for a prima donna in this company, whether at the bottom of the ladder or at the top," he says. "We're honest with the customer at all times, as bad as we look sometimes. We make mistakes like anybody else, but we never make the mistakes of lying to the customer or being dishonest."

The first E-Myth exercise is to set yourself a goal and Yakym's is clear. "My goal is to work myself out of a job, and do it with competent people underneath me. That's hard to do. For me, one of the most difficult things is to take my hands off."

With nine employees, he's still at the stage where his business is him. "I'm there closing the big deals."

Yakym is particularly proud to have two sons in the business (Yakym has five children). "I've been blessed with two sons who work with me. Some of my favorite times in this business are climbing with Jonathan, who works in our installation department. My first born, Rudy III, has taken to the business like a fish to water. He has earned a place in the organization as Vice President." Yakym expects this son to get an MBA soon.

Nevertheless, he says the most important lesson of the book, for him, is about delegation. "I spent fifteen years in the investment business, but I realized that I had certain deficiencies. My past success or failure depended directly on my efforts. Now, the success or failure of this enterprise depends not on my effort but my ability to get things accomplished through the efforts of others."

Managing people is a constant challenge. "Broken machines are easier to fix than broken people. Many ISPs were started by the lone ranger type personality and never made it past the 'us four and no more' mentality."

Yakym narrows his concern to a single question. "How do you deal with people when they fail you? I had no problem making buy or sell decisions worth millions of dollars day after day, but I knew the parameters, the numbers. I knew exactly what it was that I was doing, mathematically. I still struggle to this day with the art of discipline. I personally try to avoid conflict. I would rather let a situation go and hope it goes away than confront somebody and talk through the issue. It's difficult for me to judge when is the best time to be confrontational. I don't know who Sarah is, in the book, but I think she's my twin sister. We're not making pies here, we're pushing bits and bytes through the air, but the same business principles apply."

The future
When we ask Yakym about the future, he implies that he has every confidence in God, not by telling us a happy story, but by describing the greatest test of his faith in his life so far. "Family is important. I've been married 25 years, and soon it will be 26. We have five kids and are proud of all of them. When I'm joking, I say I've been happily married for 17 years, but actually I love my wife dearly and she's my biggest fan."

Now he tells the story. "I don't know if you've ever been in childbirth (no, I haven't), but when my youngest was being born, my daughter, they had a heart monitor on her. The umbilical cord was around her neck, and contractions are involuntary, but every contraction, I watched my daughter's heart rate go to zero. She's fifteen now and in great health, but after birth, my wife started bleeding hemorrhaging internally. I was watching the anesthesiologist roll up the pack attached to the IV like it was a toothpaste tube, trying to get as much fluid into her as possible because she was losing so much. They gave her a medication to stop the bleeding, but her heart rate went up to 200 per minute and at that point it's beating too fast to actually pump blood. As the doctors took out the paddles to shock her heart back, they asked me to leave the room."

He went into the hospital hallway and prayed. "I told God that whatever happened, I would learn it as a blessing. I meditated on Ephesians 1:3, 'Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.' I'm pleased to report she did survive. She was on a breathing apparatus for six days, but she survived. It's a matter of choice for each person, whether you believe god is in control or isn't he. Me, I choose to believe. There's no other choice for me."

Yakym is ready to face the future.

— End