Not all companies calling themselves Cell Tower Advisors are Cell Tower Lease Experts

by Steve Kazella, Telecom Lease Genius at Tower Genius, LLC.
(Idaho)

Tower Genius has been providing a very specific kind of consulting service within the cell tower industry since 2008 as experts and advisors to cell tower and cell site landlords in the United States and Canada. Tower Genius launched this, our second website back in 2009, before most of us owned a smartphone.

Back in the old days when landlords were looking for a very specialized kind of product or service, like a wholesale plumbing supply company for instance, they opened the yellow pages. They would find the following types of listings:

- AAA Wholesale Plumbing...
- AAA+ Wholesale Plumbing...
- AAAA Wholesale Plumbing Plus...
- A-A-A-A Wholesale Plumbing Advisors...

You get the idea... These are products or services needed by the masses, and it's often very difficult to tell companies apart as they all want to be the #1 listing. It's kind of like that Famous guy named Ray in New York who sells Pizza. It's kind of hard to tell the original from the imitation, or Famous Ray from Ray the Imposter.

Landlords can't really use the Yellow Pages very effectively if they have a question about a wireless tenant like Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, American Tower, Crown Castle or SBA Communications. So they they start looking online for help or information.

You'd think that cell tower landlords searching for qualified advisors, experts of consultants to help them with very specific technical advice or questions answered about cell site leases that their attorney is clueless about would be a whole lot less confusing. They shouldn't have to compare the experience to buying a slice of Pizza in Manhattan from that famous guy named Ray, right?

When you are the #1 cell tower landlord advocacy and telecom lease consulting firm in the wireless industry working exclusively for landlords who have cell towers, we have noticed that you tend to attract attention from some unscrupulous people from within the wireless industry. It may come as a shock to you that there are consultants out there right now, in our tiny wireless industry sub-section who tried to deceive cell tower landlords into believing that they were either affiliated with us, or possibly were a part of Tower Genius' former company. They did this by taking shortcuts by adopting similar sounding names, and trademarking them, and mimicking or even directly copying content and phrases from our website. While they say that "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery", we don't think that there is anything sincere about being deceitful.

So, would you really trust any advisor or consultant who has a fiduciary responsibility towards you with a major financial decision when they go far out of their way to attempt to deceive you right out of the starting gate?

Anybody that would try to pull such a scam is obviously unqualified. Any cell tower advisor or consultant who is worth their salt and who has the expertise and experience to provide these highly specialized services should be able to stand on their own merits and not need to ride on the coattails of our success in order to break into the industry.

With that being said, the partners out Tower Genius has maintained a very good and professional relationship with the handful of qualified and ethical competitors in our industry, as these competitors operate in a professional and straightforward manner, with integrity. We respect these companies because they provide tower landlords with a choice, and competition can only benefit the cell site landlord consumer.

However, the industry's bottom feeders who try to prey on unsuspecting landlords through trickery are neither professional nor straightforward and are not respected by their peers.

"Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom."
-- Thomas Jefferson

Steve Kazella, Telecom Lease Genius at

Tower Genius LLC.

888-313-9750

Editor's Note: This blog page was originally posted and published Apr 03, 2014 when we first became aware of a specific "Advisor" to the "Airwaves" in our industry. We just relaunched our brand, Tower Genius in 2017, and thought it was appropriate to re-publish this post.

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Jan 10, 2015
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starstarstarstarstar 		I think I know who you are referring to
by: Anna Marie (Kentucky)

I think I know who you are referring to. I pulled up your evil doppelgänger when I was originally looking for an expert and found your webpage. How can someone claim to be a leading expert in this narrow field when I could not find an iota of proof on the internet that he was in the wireless leasing business until 2014? This would only lead me to one major thought which is why would anybody trust their valuable cell phone tower deal to someone who is a clever marketer with questionable methods and experience?

Thank God I found you guys... you are the real deal and thank you for maximizing my lease deal. I could not be more thrilled with the results you obtained for me and the total professionalism you showed throughout the process.
Jan 10, 2015
Rating
starstarstarstarstar 		Tower Genius thanks you for vetting your "Advisors"...
by: Tower Genius

LOL !! Thanks so much Anna Marie, I got a real chuckle out of your post, and did not realize that you had that experience prior to hiring us. It really made my day, and it was a pleasure helping you.


Editor's Note:
I have spent a career building our reputation and representing all of our customers with integrity. I guess it comes as no surprise that when you have built the #1 cell site consulting company for landlords as we have done with Tower Genius, a lot of people want to take shortcuts to ride on the coattails of your success.

A word of caution from Tower Genius to anybody out there reading this... Do your homework before you do anything with your cell tower, and before you hire somebody to advise you. There are lots of "advisors" and so-called "experts" popping up there. Some of them have names that can be confusing.

We started providing cell tower consulting services for property owners and landlords in 2008, and our partners have nearly 45 years of combined wireless leasing and cell site development experience. We have been doing this for a long time. To be completely frank, there are only two other individuals on this side of the wireless industry, (both very handsome looking attorneys) one based in Florida and one based in California that we know of who have been assisting cell tower landlords longer than we have, who have been online with a website longer than we have, and who we would consider to be true experts and landlord advocates, and this commentary is not directed at them.

There is plenty of room in this industry for healthy competition. I just think that a start-up company that claims to provide almost an identical service and then comes up with a name that so closely resembled ours, and then trademarked it, was done for only one reason. Hopefully landlords can clearly see the difference.

Unfortunately not only landlords have confused the names several times, but recently the #1 tower management company in the United States, CCI copied me on "this other company's" confidential landlord lease negotiations, since they thought that I was working with his company.

Can you say confusion?? If a multi-billion dollar tower company that I have to talk to often several times every day for my customers gets confused between my company and these other guys, what about landlords that are seeking honest advice about their cell tower??

Funny, no one ever confused us with one of our competitors until mid 2014, right after these "advisors" to the "airwaves" appeared online.

Up until this day, our company has never paid for press releases to be published in newspapers to promote that we are cell tower experts.

It's interesting that our former name and current brand name, Tower Genius doesn't sound anything like the word "Steel" or like the word "Vertical". No confusion there. Even a 2 year old could tell the difference.

The CEO of that "Advisor" company followed us on Twitter twice, in 2013 and 2014. I could post the screenshot here to shame this individual and his company and show this person's name as they followed us on Twitter in 2013. Looking at his profile you would never know he had any cell tower experience, just a general commercial real estate background.

Funny the company he claims to have worked for as their cell tower consultant has actually hired our company for our cell cite lease expertise TWICE and during that time as well. Guess he was still in training then. I won't post the 2nd screenshot either, showing the smug response when he followed us on Twitter again in April of 2014, days after he started his Tweeting as a "cell site lease" expert. By this time he was using his new cell site lease expert "Advisory-type" profile. But I won't share this individual's name or his company's name. He's probably going to get more traffic off of this single blog post than his entire website gets in a month.

And by the way, to set the record straight, our firm was first to coin the phrase, "we level the playing field" for cell tower landlords. In fact, we published it first in 2008 or 2009. That is why we now proudly display it on the header of every one of our hundreds of web pages. We have since seen this identical quote and similar expressions on several other of our competitor's websites, including our friend the "advisor's" site, all claiming to do what we do. Don't believe me? Just "Google" the words in no particular order, "cell tower level the playing field" -- and see the results you get.

A final bit of advice, Caveat Emptor, Let the Buyer Beware!

Sorry about the rant Anna Marie, that's all for now.

Thanks again for choosing Tower Genius.

Cell site landlords, the Airwaves are full of sharks... choose your "ADVISORS" wisely. (wink-wink)




Very Sincerely,

Steve from Tower Genius /sarc

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