How it all started
In February of 2000 I was driving home from my day job with the South Carolina Army National Guard when I decided to ask the man above for help. I was miserable and had had enough. I was being pressured to accept a long deployment to Kosovo, and had recently finished a six month mission in Honduras. As soon as I parked my car I heard the telephone ringing inside my house. I raced to answer it.
Me: Hello?
Female voice: Hello may I speak with Tony Bolan?
Me: I am Tony Bolan.
Female voice: Hi, I'm Jill with Datastream. I have your resume and want to talk to you about a position we have open.
That's where this story begins.
If you remember, early 2000 was during the dot com hay day. Datastream hired me and a boat load of other warm bodies because business was booming. I was trained specifically to be an MP2 and iProcure consultant. At the time, Tim was the training director. I noticed something very unusual about Tim. He was passionate about what he did. At some time during those eight weeks of training with Tim and his trainers I became passionate too. For the second time in my life I had found real passion - the first time was when I met my wife.
If you remember, mid 2000 was when the dot com bubble collapsed. My managers had kept me out in the field consulting one customer after the other, so I wasn't aware of the office politics. Suddenly many of the support people at the home office that I had grown accustomed to working with weren't answering their phones or e-mails any longer. The firings had begun. There were rumors of people still in training who had quit comfortable jobs to join Datastream getting called to H.R. to be told that their employment was terminated.
I continued to travel all over the country doing one consulting gig after the other. I had met some really incredible people and had worked in a variety of industries. One of most fascinating people I met was Earl Jackson of Nucor Steel in Darlington, South Carolina. Earl was passionate about what he did. Another fascinating person I got to meet was Tom Kane of Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts. Tom was passionate about what he did. They are both two of my best friends to this day.
I decided I would master 7i or D7i as I came to call it. I loved it, but it was a pain to figure out. I went out training customers on D7i knowing that I wasn't the sharpest tool in the drawer. Nonetheless, I worked hard learning all I could about it while alone at nights in hotel rooms. Within a couple of years I was confident with the application even though I knew I still had a long way to go to master it.
One day a fellow consultant told me that he was sent on an assignment with an IBM consultant as a tag along. He was instructed to teach the IBM consultant all he could about 7i. Rumors were being floated around that several other consulting firms were going to be implementing 7i. Meanwhile several other fellow consultants, who we considered 7i champions, were fired for no apparent reasons. I began feeling insecure with my employment. More importantly, I felt my passion was threatened.
I decided to eliminate the threat by leaving Datastream on my own, and starting my own consulting company. That was over seven years ago, and I still have the passion. Datastream is now owned by Infor. 7i is now called EAM, and I master EAM.
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