James Shepherd Email & Phone Number

Hollidaysburg, Pa, Us

We provide training for merchant sales agents and organizations. Our knowledge base has over 40 hours of video / audio training programs that cover industry knowledge and sales tactics that are specific to the merchant services space. We also offer our 6 Week Jump Start Training as both an individual or group license course to help new or experienced agents get to the next level within established organizations or as independent ISOs.

Duncansville, Pennsylvania, Us

My two passions in business are sales and software development. Creating ISO Amp with our interchange prediction algorithm and statement analysis AI has allowed me to access both of these passions to create the leading proposal generation software for independent sales representatives in the merchant services industry. Creating a merchant services proposal has never been easier. Start with an estimated proposal in 60 seconds with or without a copy of the statement using our predictive algorithm or upload a statement and let our human assisted AI create a side by side. After creating the Prototype for this tool, it has been exciting to hire a team of top notch developers to overhaul and expand our solutions. We now have a complete suite of enterprise and individual solutions including marketing campaign features and an API.

CCStorage provides self storage property management and payment processing at zero net cost. Our easy to use system allows owners of independent self storage properties to set up a free account in minutes and provide a login to their tenants to manage invoices and payments. We also provide our clients with a hosted page showing available units and allowing potential tenants to search and reserve units online.We achieve a true zero cost solution by offering zero software fees and implementing a fully integrated, differential pricing for our clients. This means we have different prices for cash, card and ACH payments. The additional revenue we collect on Card and ACH payments is used to offset the cost of payment acceptance so that our clients receive the equivelent of 100% of the cash price on each lease.We built the first version of this software in 2018 and quickly realized that owners of small, independent self storage properties were not ready to invest in software and payment processing. We relaunched a new version of the software with a fully payment integration in December of 2022 with a zero net cost solution.

My various companies worked with John Doe Design for our web design needs and we saw an opportunity to partner together. John Doe Design was acquired by CCBizPro LLC in 2012 which was our holding company at the time for our Payments ISO. We leveraged our 1099 sales channel to generate significant new business by selling web design services to small business owners. After selling our last ISO in 2015, and more than tripling John Doe Design revenues, we spun off John Doe Design in a sale back to the original ownership.

One of my first business ventures, I built Christmas Creations over three seasons. We installed Christmas lights for wealthy clients in the Chicago area. We also serviced these accounts throughout the season, then returned to take down the lights and store them. This full service solution was designed to create recurring revenue.This was also my first experience with Google Adwords and SEO as almost all of our leads were the result of Google search and PPC. We doubled revenues each year for three consecutive seasons.After moving from the Chicago area to Pennsylvania, I sold this business to my Sister and brother in law, who was our head of operations. They ran this business succesfully for 10 seasons before completing a sale in 2021.

I worked first as a sales rep, then as one of the first Field Sales Managers with a great team of 20+ sales representatives in the Merrillville, IN branch. With the help, advice and support of two great Branch Marketing Managers, Scott Steepleton and Chad Vis our team was able to perform consistently at or near the top of our region and the company as a whole.I returned to TruGreen in 2007 to be a Branch Marketing Manager in the Chicago Region. In this position, I put together an eight million dollar a year revenue budget and worked with all the departments reporting directly to the Branch Manager and the Region Marketing Manager to achieve sales and marketing goals. I remained in this position through one complete season before leaving to start Christmas Creations, a profession Christmas Light installation company.

This was my very first true entrepreneurial adventure at 21 years old where I managed a team and raised capital from investors. It was a fantastic "learning experience" which is code for, we lost a bunch of money! The concept was to purchase and flip residential real estate. We created our own construction crew and were able to secure financing. We purchased 7 residential properties and renovated / flipped 4 of them before the real estate crash in 2008. This left us upside down on the remaining properties with high interest financing. We shut down the business and lost money on this venture. I learned many valuable lessons about business and about myself. First of all, I decided never to run a business again, where cost control is the primary driver of success. My strength is in revenue growth and I delegate cost control. Secondly, I developed a healthy skepticism regarding outside capital for growth. I am not opposed to outside capital, but I recognize the limitations and approach outside capital with caution.Lastly, I tempered my natural optimism to question every assumption, especially assumptions outside my control such as the direction of a given market.