By Bill Span

In early 1991, in a conversation between Larry Huff and Towru Ikeda in Northern California, the spark
of the idea of the American prepaid phonecard was invented.  It would become a multi-billion dollar industry.

Larry and Towru hired Bill VonHelmet to design and build the first computer program/switching equipment
to process a prepaid phone call in the United States. Larry Tolbert and David L. Eastis were brought
on as founding partners and the four went to work to launch the prepaid phone card industry in this country.

They named their new company "AmeriVox".

At this time neither the word "prepaid" nor the word "phonecard" existed in the American consciousness.

The product was propelled by the fact that it could be utilized to make inexpensive long distance calls
"instate" at a time when high priced monopolies like GTE Hawaiian Tel were charging exorbitant fees
for local (instate) long distance. We were the first new technology to break that specific monopoly
and offer callers a much cheaper alternative by dialing a few extra numbers.

Kevin Young contemplating the fate of the free world in 1997 - By now long distance calling was almost free

In a meeting with Doug Davis and Kevin Young in Kirkland, Washington (near Seattle) the partners
found the catalyst to start building the sale force. Four years later, 130,000 sales reps would have
signed up and 200 million dollars of phone cards would be sold. Basically all the reps in AmeriVox
descended from Kevin and Doug. The key man to the deal was Kevin Young.

He welded together the sales force. He was the company when it came to who lead the sales team.

Kevin recruited Matt Jones who immediately enrolled Bill Span in March of 1992. At that point Span
was the first person in Hawaii to start recruiting people to sell phone cards, even though the product
did not not work in the islands until July 1992. We sold cards to tourists who would take them back to
the mainland and use them. Matt Jones and I built a sales team, starting on the island of Kauai, that
were sold on the opportunity by one story we told over and over. That one story started it all.

The vision of the product someday being available in the islands was all we had in the beginning.

We sold the dream

The day service launched, the people of Hawaii had their first inexpensive alternative to GTE Hawaiian Tel's
monopoly and they could start saving big money on their inter-island calls. Calls across the island chain
were 28 cents a minutes and our calls were 16 cents per minute once the customer used some time.

Four years later ... Span's sales team in Hawaii would total more than 5,000 people. Span's group
would sell over 20 million dollars of phone cards. GTE Hawaiian Tel would radically lower their
in-state calling rates, because of the amount of business we took from them via this new technology.

The two Alaskan phone monopolies were the next target.

Five trips to Alaska from Honolulu created 2,000 reps selling phone time at half the price of AlasCom
and GCI. Millions of dollars a month were saved by the hard working Alaskan people now cutting the
cost of a major utility in half. Calls from Anchorage to Juneau were 56 cents per minute.

Span's total sales team exceeded 8,000 people. One out of every 10 people in Hawaii carried an
AmeriVox card by 1996. n one record month we sold 120,000 phone cards in Hawaii.

The signing of a worldwide exclusive for the rights to put Elvis Presley on the phone cards furthered
interest in the phone cards and now they became collectable. Later John F. Kennedy and
wife Jackie were exclusively featured on the cards. My largest client was Konishiki (625 pounds).
His favorite client was Wyland, the ocean artist. It was the most popular card in the company.

Other royalty deals included Richard Petty, Norman Rockwell, Ken Griffey Jr., and Steffi Graff

Kevin Young's personal sales team exceeded 80,000 reps and all the leadership in the company
was identified, tutored and inspired by Kevin. This team of people represented one of the finest
groups of individuals ever brought together. The conventions and rallies were legendary.

Kevin and Bill today collaborate on Internet based projects and seek the next "Camelot".

The entire phone card industry as it exists today can directly trace it's birth to the pioneering efforts
of the early AmeriVox reps, lead by Kevin Young, Matt Jones and a handful of others, one of which was Bill Span.

 here's the life story of Bill Span (best read if you can't sleep or are really bored).