Vince Barsolo, leader of sales & marketing company Televerde, aims to change lives while turning a profit. 

“Since 1994, we have partnered with first the State of Arizona for the ability to work with incarcerated women. And the mission of the company is to provide training and development to these individuals in sales and marketing, so that upon their release, they can land gainful employment and support themselves and their families and have a much better chance at a successful future,” says Vince Barsolo, CEO of sales and marketing company Televerde, in an exclusive interview for the Dave Alexander Center for Social Capital. Such a noble goal; must be a nonprofit, right?

Wrong.

As Vince makes clear, “We’re a for-profit business. Absolutely. We compete to win. We have performance standards. We have key performance indicators. We have metrics that we look at across the business, like any other business.”

A key part of meeting those standards and goals, he explains, is in preparing the women to represent Televerde’s customer base. “We have wonderful clients that really buy into what Televerde does — and the byproduct of our effort, which is these women successfully transitioning back in society. But,” he notes significantly, “the only reason they’re buying from us is because we’re good at what we do. And in order to be good at what we do, we have to invest in the people in the business.”

That’s a point he emphasizes from many angles throughout the interview. “And so I think that if you’re just looking at dollars and cents and not thinking about the people who are involved with that, you’re doing yourself and your business a bit of a disservice,” he says, noting, “The ladies who work for us in the centers, they would run through a brick wall if we asked them to because they’ve seen it that the model will benefit them in the long run.” And not only are they determined for their own success but they committed to the program, to pay it forward. “And the women in particular help one another and are actually assisting with the development of the folks that are coming behind them, whether it’s somebody who’s in the centers today helping some of our new hire folks or it’s women who have gotten back to the community, helping those that are transitioning behind them.”

And, while Vince describes Televerde’s success with its clients, he proudly notes another success: The recidivism rate since the business started in 1994 is just under 7%. “And the win for them is not making President’s Club, but the win for them is changing their lives. So, there’s lots of motivation there because the majority of them, they do want their lives to change and want it to become better than it was pre-incarceration.”

He shares the philosophy that carries through the training, and points out that, although the model is different for Televerde’s two international locations from its operations in three U.S. states, “the practice is similar in terms of the training and the development that we’re focusing on and the individuals that work in the business. And the reason for the internationals is because we’ve expanded into different regions in language. So, if we’re doing a marketing program for someone in Germany, we have the ability to employ native German speakers on their behalf. And so the principles with the model, even though it does well and has the byproduct of giving the women the opportunity to change their lives, the training, the processing or coaching techniques are applicable anywhere — they do center around the individuals working in the business.”

The value and benefit of focusing on those individuals shines through as Vince describes what brought him to Televerde and where he’s taking it. Click on the link below and share the inspiration.