Eron Heard: “Do What You Love”

At a young age, Eron Heard learned one of the most valuable lessons of his life.  “Do what you love.” Through everything, this one lesson has stayed with the professional.  As the Vice President of Strategic Accounts at Carousel Industries, Eron Heard is doing what he loves.  Heard is one of the few people fortunate enough to wake up every morning excited to go to work.

For many people, work is a drag; it’s a chore that must be completed in order to live.  But, for Eron Heard, work is his passion.  Heard loves his career, in which he often negotiates contracts and oversees relationships between Carousel Industries, clients, and sub-contractors.  Of course, some days the work is especially challenging.  However, the vast majority of the time, Eron Heard is thrilled to be on board with Carousel Industries.

His secret?  He’s doing what he loves.  If you’re trying to figure out how you can be happy in your own career, Eron Heard will quickly ask you, “Well, are you following your passion?”  If not, he might offer you some tips to challenge the way you’re approaching your career.  If you aren’t following your passion, Eron Heard recommends that you: 

• Ask yourself what you’re good at.  Oftentimes (but not always), our natural skills and abilities are in-line with our passions.  Look for ways to put your skills to use.  Also, think outside the box.
• Consider what your ultimate goals are.  You might find that you don’t have to work and save for that trip to the mountains.  Maybe you could find a line of work that gets you there directly.
• Thirdly, Eron Heard advises people to never try to avoid hard work.  Some people want their dreams to just “happen.”  This is never how it works.  Eron Heard knows that in some jobs you just have to “stick it out” for a few months or years until you’re doing what you love.

Eron Heard on Using LinkedIn

Eron Heard is a big believer in the power of LinkedIn.  As the Vice President of Strategic Accounts with Carousel Industries, Eron Heard has seen first hand the power of LinkedIn.  A lot of Heard’s work is in bringing together sub-contractors and Carousel Industries’ clients.  Of course, Eron Heard must also represent Carousel during the process.

Uniting multiple groups, individuals, and the companies that they represent can present many difficult challenges.  However, Eron Heard has found that his job is made easier through the use of LinkedIn.  As he prepares for a big meeting, Eron Heard can head over to LinkedIn in order to research his fellow professionals.  He can discover former employers and various mutual contacts that they share.  This knowledge can help him smooth over the meeting process.  Plus, it can bring a sense of camaraderie to the meeting, which further helps everyone be at ease.  When clients and providers are put at ease, it’s much more likely that everyone will have their interests met.

Eron Heard has found LinkedIn to be incredibly valuable for him.  He believes that it’s also a great resource for countless of other professionals.  It might not be the most popular networking site worldwide.  However, it’s absolutely the most popular professional networking site. Eron Heard believes that the popularity of LinkedIn is still rising.  Heard thinks that more people will come to use LinkedIn in 2013 than ever before.

Eron Lamont Heard believes that more people using LinkedIn will only serve to make the site better than before.  The more profiles that are on LinkedIn, the more accurate the “big picture” will be.  For example, when someone new joins LinkedIn, they’re able to add another snapshot to the greater networking picture.  Their presence can help fill in more information about the greater picture.

Getting Started With Your Career? Advice From Eron Heard

Eron Heard knows a thing or two about holding down a successful professional career.  For starters, he knows that “holding down a job” isn’t an attitude anyone who’s known success has ever held.  Rather than maintaining a job, Eron Heard knows that pushing your job to the limits is the only way to further your career.

As the Vice President of Strategic Accounts with Carousel Industries, Eron Heard has had to push his career in many ways – time and time again – in order to get to where he is today.  If you’re looking to further your career like Eron Heard has, then you should check out his tips below…

• Figure out what you love to do.  It’s a lot easier to be successful when success means you get to spend more time and more work in a field that you love!  Eron Heard loves networking and developing relationships, making his career choice perfect for him.
• Next, Eron Heard advises that you seek out advice from those who have your dream job.  He frequently encourages young professionals to send out emails or LinkedIn messages to those professionals that they admire.  You’ll almost always hear back.  And, 99% of the time, the response will be very warm and positive, says Eron Heard.
• Once you’ve figured out what you love doing, and you’ve sought the advice of others who are good at it, Eron Heard recommends that you write out a game plan.  Figure out where you want to be in one year; five years; ten years.
• Lastly, in order to have a really successful career, Eron Heard recommends that you have an accountability partner who can double-check you on your career steps.  It’s easy to fall away from your strategic game plan if you don’t have someone to hold you to it.

Eron Heard & Bank of America

Eron Heard is excited to be have landed a major contract with Bank of America.  As the Vice President of Strategic Accounts with Carousel Industries, Eron Heard is responsible for overseeing many of the major contracts that Carousel Industries takes on.  His professional career is marked with successful signings, arrangements, and agreements between Carousel, clients, and third-party sub-contractors.

The 2004 Bank of America contract was another feather in the cap for Eron Heard.  The $1.1 billion managed network services agreement awarded to EDS was good for eight and a half years. Eron Heard and Carousel Industries helped outsource the managed network services to EDS, which assumed responsibility for the Bank of America network in early 2003.  The agreement is a part of a larger $4.5 billion contract.

For Eron Heard, 2004 was a very exciting year.  Eight years later, he’s still enjoying the success that came along with that contract.  Since working on that contract with Bank of America, Eron Heard has done some wonderful things.  He’s landed many other big contracts, including one with Lockheed Martin. 

However, the Bank of America contract still stands out in Heard’s memory as one of the highlights of his career.  Something of a forecasting expert, Eron Lamont Heard knew even then that the Bank of America contract would be a very strategic one that would come in handy in the future.  Since he first sealed the deal in 2004, the contract has turned out to be quite advantageous for both Carousel Industries and Bank of America.

Lockheed Martin and Eron Heard

Many people have heard of Lockheed Martin.  Many more people are unaware of just how huge Lockheed Martin is.  In 2008, Lockheed Martin received $36 billion in government contracts alone.  The company received billions more from private contracts.

Lockheed Martin is one of the biggest corporations in existence, and Eron Heard is proud to have an association with them.  By having Lockheed Martin as a client, Eron Heard has been able to become even better at providing first-class data infrastructure solutions.

Eron Heard helped develop a relationship between Lockheed Martin, Shared Technologies, and his employer, Carousel Industries.  As the Vice President of Strategic Accounts with Carousel Industries, developing these strategic relationships that are advantages to all parties involved is a big part of Heard’s purpose.

He was able to negotiate a contract between all three parties in which Shared Technologies provided Avaya telecom services and support to Lockheed Martin.  The relationship has proven to be quite fruitful since it was first started.  The services are designed specifically for Lockheed Martin Global Supply Chain Operations (LMC-GSCO). 

The Lockheed Martin Global Supply Chain Operations department needed telecommunications services, including maintenance, and move/add/change (MAC) activity.  Also, Lockheed Martin required dedicated labor support.

Currently, Eron Heard is working to look into new LMC locations where the contract might be extended.  Additional locations would mean more business for Carousel Industries, but more importantly, it would mean that Lockheed Martin has the ability to extend its reach with the very best in communication services.

Of course, Eron Heard doesn’t just work with major public companies like Lockheed Martin. Eron Heard is also eager to help smaller businesses with rapid growth achieve their goals even more effectively and faster than ever before.  By providing Carousel’s services, Eron Heard can help these companies explode!

Eron Heard Is Growing With Carousel Industries

Eron Heard loves innovation.  When new companies are involved in groundbreaking projects, Eron Heard wants to be there.  The fresh and innovative clients are his favorite to work with through his employer, Carousel Industries.

With this kind of attitude and approach to communication and data infrastructure solutions, it makes sense that Eron Heard would be attracted to his employer, Carousel Industries, in the first place.  Carousel Industries is known throughout the corporate and government world for providing some of the very best telecommunication, VoIP, and video conferencing solutions in the country.  Carousel Industries is also a relatively young company.  It was founded in 1992, and is currently celebrating 20 years in 2012.

Eron Heard got his start with Carousel several years ago, excited to join this fast-growing network solutions company.  The company has grown 30-50% per year (on average) since 1992, making it one of the most successful communications companies in the United States.  2010 revenues were estimated to be upwards of $200 million.

Carousel Industries has over 5,000 companies, 35 of which are Fortune 100 companies.  Furthermore, the company has been recognized by VAR and CRN Magazines as one of the top technology integrators in the United States.  Carousel Industries has also appeared on the Inc. 500 list five times throughout the years.

Clearly, Carousel Industries is growing fast.  For someone like Eron Heard – who can’t stay away from growth – Carousel Industries is the perfect match. Eron Heard can’t imagine working for anyone else.

Heard’s biggest priority is looking out for his clients at Carousel Industries. Eron Heard prides himself in being always on-call for his clients, from the big ones like Lockheed Martin down to the small ones.

The Future of Telecommunications Managed Services With Eron Lamont Heard

Eron Heard recognizes that the managed services industry is undergoing a major shift.  As voice, data & video network solutions become more technical with a major shift to IT based technologies and transportation methods, traditional TDM companies of old aren’t booming quite as much as they were in the 1990s and early 2000s.  Also, with a shift to cloud-based data storage and retrieval technology, the entire industry is undergoing a change.

Telecom/data management is about to explode into an even bigger industry than ever before with the introduction of the cloud.  While networks used to primarily hold business and website information, networks are preparing to store more information than ever before.  The introduction of the cloud means personal music libraries, photographs, documents, and other information that used to be relegated to the responsibility of personal hard drives are now moving into the realm of remote storage.

Eron Heard is ready for the shift.  As the Vice President of Strategic Accounts with Carousel Industries, Eron Heard has seen cloud-based technology slowly take hold of businesses and forward thinking corporations over the last few years.  As the greater public begins to latch onto these technologies through new products and software, Eron Heard predicts the data management world will see stunning growth.

Eron Lamont Heard is already brimming with ideas about how he can provide products and services to this new sector of cloud-based data consumers. 

If you’re looking to jump in on the cloud-based data industry, then Eron Heard thinks there’s no better time than now.  There are enough resources and platforms already in place for many entrepreneurs to get involved with low start-up costs. Eron Heard is doing it; he thinks others should follow suit.

Eron Heard: What Is Forecasting?

Eron Heard wears many hats.  His title may read “Vice President of Strategic Accounts with Carousel Industries.”  However, Eron Heard does a lot of work that falls under the strategic accounts umbrella.  One responsibility he carries in his work with Carousel Industries is forecasting.

If you ask a business professional what forecasting is, you’re likely to get a slightly different answer every single time.  Depending upon the company and the industry, forecasting can mean a variety of things.  For Eron Heard at Carousel Industries, forecasting is predicting upcoming sales activities.

For example, when Eron Heard is drawing up a new contract with a new client, there will almost always be some pre-existing conditions clause that’s worked into the contract.  A pre-existing condition clause covers Carousel Industries when something outside of their control arises.  For example, if the cost of a product material was to suddenly spike (indisputably outside of Carousel’s control), then a pre-existing clause might authorize a change in the price at which the product is provided to the consumer.

By “forecasting,” Eron Heard is able to recognize issues (like the ones that might be covered by a pre-existing conditions clause) before they become issues.  This is a critical ability for any businessperson to have.  However, forecasting is especially important for Eron Heard because of his leadership role with Strategic Accounts.

Eron Heard on Life in Arizona

For Eron Heard, few places in the world are more appealing than Phoenix, Arizona. Eron Heard is the Vice President of Strategic Accounts for Carousel Industries, an Exeter, Rhode Island-based company.  However, he’s enjoyed being able to live in sunny Phoenix, Arizona, and work remotely.

When winter rolls around, Eron Heard is especially glad to be living in Phoenix instead of Exeter.  The average temperature in Phoenix for January is a balmy 56 degrees.  The average low is 46, and the average high is 67, making Phoenix an ideal escape for snowbirds.  However, Eron Heard likes living there year round.  Temperatures can soar well over 100 degrees during peak summer months.  Being a fan of warm weather, that suits Eron Heard just fine.

In addition to having nice temperatures and weather conditions, Phoenix is quite close to some mountainous areas, a fact that Eron Heard loves.  Whenever he catches a break from work, Eron Heard loves to head up into the mountains.  After a long week of negotiating telecommunications solutions agreements with Carousel’s clients, a brief respite in the mountains is much needed.  Thanks to the city’s proximity to the mountains, getting that time away isn’t very difficult to Eron Heard.

Then again, Phoenix doesn’t just have mountains.  The city is close by to beautiful dessert regions, which Eron Heard has come to enjoy.  Driving through these dessert plains is a fun way to escape for a little while.  Plus, the experience doesn’t compare to anything that Exeter has to offer. Eron Heard loves the unique landscape of Arizona, which is miles apart – figuratively and literally – from Carousel’s home base in Rhode Island.

Eron Heard plans to call Phoenix home forever. The city and surrounding area is living up to all of his expectations.