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Thomas W. Loker -
Best-Selling Author, Mentor

Why he is who he is.

I am the sum of my experiences.

We are all a product of the sum of our life’s experiences beginning with where we were raised in our formative years and the values built into our character by our parents, grandparents, community, and culture. I was blessed with a unique set of circumstances in which to grow up. I was born to a time, place, and style of life that no longer exists. Who I am and what I know today is a direct result of this experience.

A mix of two worlds

I was born and raised in Leonardtown, Maryland, on the Chesapeake Bay banks in Maryland. The community I was raised in enjoyed isolation from much of the progress, and strife, of the rest of the U.S. during my formative years. While my grandfather, father, uncles, and some cousins were judges, lawyers, and medical doctors, the community I lived in was dominated by farmers and watermen.

Thomas W. Loker believes a valued life is based on character.

Judge William Meverell Loker
judge william meverell loker

Beginning with my paternal grandfather, a lawyer and respected circuit court judge—born in the later-half of the 19th century, I was taught that our understanding of ourselves and our place in the world must be as a contributing member of the community and our success in becoming integral in our community would be based on our integrity, strength, commitment, and character. These characteristics he instilled in all of his children, who went on to become respected doctors, lawyers, devoted wives, a sister of charity, and a Xaverian brother. Each of his children dedicated their lives to serving God, country, community, and family. My father became a respected lawyer. Many of my in-laws and friends were farmers and watermen. These are people whose lives were innately close to the land and the water, who made their livings from the bounty and fertility of the surrounding area, and lived in a manner more akin to the first half of the 20th century. The 1950s and 1960s were my formative years when neighbors not only helped neighbors but when people relied on community support for survival. No one who felt they were above the hard work and support of others survived very long in this community.

Mentored by relationships between the law and the land

Law And Land ImageAs some of my friends grew up the son of farmers, watermen, and business owners, I grew up the son of a lawyer. After school, I spent much of my youth either in my father and uncle’s law office or on the boat with my brother-in-law and his associates, fishing, oystering, hunting, and trapping. This ideal existence gave me a breadth of background to be uninhibited by complicated issues as one sees in legal contracts and equally at home with simpler commitments as one finds in the field or on the boat with those who live off the land. This experience gave me the best environment to learn confidence in myself and my abilities and understand that we can all do anything that we put our mind to and accomplish with diligence and perseverance, what often seems impossible, and recognizing the consequences of lack of character. Living in a historically water-based community also gave me the mobility to go almost anywhere at a very early age by boat, something that people in other communities that relied on autos could not. Boats, in those days, did not require a license, so I had a level of freedom and access at a very early age that stimulated my mind, built personal reliance, and enhanced my skills at overcoming obstacles and achieving objectives.

Benefitted by a strong foundational education

I was educated and mentored through a series of parochial schools that emphasized strong catholic or religious values, respect for others, the value of hard work, education, and the ability to learn effectively and efficiently. My military education instilled in me a strong respect for discipline, improvisation, adaptability, responsibility, the value of teamwork, dogged persistence, and leadership skill. My higher education emphasized science, biometrics, human nature and understanding, philosophy, systemic natural selection, and systems integration. All these things both directly, and in the abstract, I have applied throughout my business career.

A wide range of skills grew from the variety of occupations in my early career.

Dry Cleaners ImageMy early business career included; working in, and later managing, a dry cleaners, working in the funeral business, managing science laboratories, and teaching at the college level, operating bookstores, designing and managing the build-out of period (17th century) construction, retail sales of groceries, shoes and clothing, music equipment, computer products; wholesale distribution of computers, printers, telecommunications devices; manufacturing of software, computers, printers, wired and wireless earpieces, and other products; development of catalog sales companies, franchise sales companies, and more.

From incubators to Iron lungs — from the outhouse to the penthouse.

My mid-period business career developed as the founder and head of an innovative consulting company providing integrated business solutions to many companies on many continents and eventually focusing on providing unique incubator services for start-up companies and equally innovative “iron-lung” services for companies in trouble. During this period, we developed a breadth of practice that prompted one of my associates to say to a client, “We have clients from the outhouse to the penthouse.” With clients in sanitary and wastewater management all the way to personal electronic device manufacturing and robotics, we have covered many territories. At the peak of my consulting period, spanning almost 18 years, we had clients worldwide, United States, Canada, Belgium, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, Austria, Italy, Germany, Japan, and China.

Thomas W Loker Image

Experienced in development, structure, and management in companies large and small

I have worked for large companies like Epson America, Stanford’s Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital, and ComputerLand Corporation. I have provided consulting services to large companies like Toshiba, NEC, Funai Electric Corporation, and small companies like Safebridge Consultants, Sybersay Communications, Inc., Redzone Robotics, Inc., Icommm, Inc. (sold to RedZone in 2009), and many others.
- Thomas W. Loker

What Benefits Does Tom Bring?

What is the value proposition – what problems do you solve?

This new century’s dynamic business environment has taken a firm hold and forced a real change in how we look at business, how we reach customers, and how we develop successful business models. Whether you are working to provide healthcare to those of means or the underserved or offering new products, technologies, or services, what is required are management and systems that can deliver machinelike efficiency, quality, and choice.

The rise of the internet has further blurred the line between tangible products and intangible services. In this new, fully in-sync connected world, intangibles now can and should be packaged, delivered, and inventoried in the same way tangible products were just a few years ago.

The world of Covid-19 has changed the entire dynamic of where and how work is done. We are a global economy with global employees. Many are no longer tied to a physical location, most are mobile-first, and the most profitable start-ups are virtual.

The electronic frontier has become the electronic Main Street and Wall Street, all wrapped into one. To succeed today, one needs integrated strategies touching all phases and disciplines in business, comprehensive checks and balances supporting both employee’s human needs and investor and financial institutions fiscal requirements. Ultimately, what is needed are mechanisms to lower costs to achieve a competitive position in local, regional, and national markets and, in effect, the world.
Tom and his seasoned business professionals’ network bring a team approach to identify clients’ business problems and convert them into opportunities by combining quantifiable problem-solving methodologies with experienced professional business judgment.

“It is the stuff you don’t know that hurts you!” We focus on helping companies, entrepreneurs, investors, and executives get answers to the things they don’t know and integrating the answers they get from their other professionals and consultants into actionable and non-duplicative guidance. Tom’s philosophy is we are “Problem solvers, NOT problem identifiers!”

Who can you support? What industries? What business areas?

One of Tom’s associates a few years ago remarked, “We have clients ranging from the Outhouse to the Penthouse.” Tom has been involved in many industries, from science and education to philanthropy and non-profits, from retail to wholesale, from manufacturing to distribution, from services to software to hardware, from under-served communities to upscale investment, from industries like sanitary and wastewater to robotics and most recent government and healthcare. If Tom and his team can’t find the answers, they have the Rolodex and the experience to find and deliver those that can.

What is your value proposition?

All of his associates have a like diversity of experience and in-depth knowledge. Members of his teams include some of the top professionals in many areas. The list of his current and accessible team members include one of Microsoft most recognized Software Legends, one of the world’s top .NET experts, industry leaders in cloud computing, some of the top leaders in the business of franchise development, predictive analytics, pharmaceutical, and biotech environmental health and safety, and many others. He draws from an extensive Rolodex of seasoned professionals with many years of business design, development, financing, and operation experience. Its principals have all been directly involved in startups, turnarounds, mergers, and acquisitions. Areas of practice range from sales and marketing, retail, franchising, wholesale/distribution, manufacturing–both technology and non-technology–health care, public policy, hardware and software design and development, systems management, law, finance, fundraising, strategic planning, operations, and implementation, organizational design and compensation, and other areas.

Tom’s value proposition helps you save money by avoiding mistakes, inefficiencies, wasted and duplicated effort, and helping you get actionable answers that increase your returns on investments.

What problem is it you solve for your customers, or how do you help them?

Regardless of the problem, Tom and his teams bring a dirty hands approach to create an integrated method to help companies get well-integrated solutions to difficult problems. Having “Been there, done that, and bought the T-Shirt,” Tom and all members of his teams have experienced first-hand the difficulties executives find as they try to get various groups of people both inside the company and outside professionals like lawyers and accountants to provide solutions.

More often than not, what is provided is simply a systematic list of the problems, not ways to solve them. If by chance, you do get a solution from one segment of your professional group, more often than not, it will be in direct conflict with that of another of your advisors and contractors.

Unlike others, Tom and his partners specialize in helping you corral the process, and if required, help you manage your groups, turn them into teams, and effectively bring true solutions from the process. This is the one place you can find the right person to get you the answers to the stuff you don’t know. If you find your people are not getting you the answers you need. Tom and his partners have an extensive Rolodex of many experienced professionals, and since they have worked together often before, they know how to get you the best results.

Suppose you need it and don’t know how to get it? Call Tom. Whether it is taking on the development of a new product, developing a new and innovative method to sell more products, planning what your company will look like and offer in the future, or working to change public policy, Tom and his teams are the places to go to get – the stuff you don’t know!

  1. Do you have a hard time getting straight answers from your employees and your team of outside contractors? We can fix this for you.
  2. Do you feel you always have to make decisions based on incomplete, confusing, conflicting, or bad information? We can fix this for you.
  3. Do you find that every time you make a decision, you feel alone and exposed? We can fix this for you!
  4. Do you know you need to revise your strategic plans but lack confidence in your team and outside advisors to have the depth of knowledge and experience to deliver?

These are just a few of the issues Tom and his team can solve for you.

What do you perceive as our biggest business challenge?

Whether in healthcare or any other business segment over the next half-century, our biggest business challenge is the economic and political systemic failures we have begun to experience in the past 20 years. Unlike the prior century, where net exports drove our economic prosperity through efficient manufacturing and raw materials production and conversion in areas like; heavy industrial manufacturing, steel, cotton, foodstuffs, oil, coal, fisheries, and technologies (tangible hard-value products), since 1972 our economy and the underlying business engine have been based on Finance, Investment and Real Estate; the so-called FIRE economy (intangible soft-value non-products). To most economists today, this FIRE economic engine collapsed long ago.

This issue is restricting our future growth and potentially, in many cases, our national survival. Numerous issues that are our biggest challenges today, like healthcare, manufacturing, infrastructure industries, communication, and energy, are believed by some to become the basis of our future economic engine, the so-called ICE economy—standing for infrastructure, communication, and energy. These areas have been much of Tom’s and his team’s, focus for the past ten or more years.

Additionally, the recent migration to the computing cloud is forcing not just a paradigm shift in the cost, economics, and delivery of information technology-based solutions. Still, the continual drive for better economics, more efficient communications, simplified data exchanges, and increased desire for privacy and individual control over personal information, along with the selection pressure, of physical bandwidth and storage limit constraints, will select for an evolved, simpler, person-centered transaction system. Tom and his teams have spent many hours studying over the past few years for healthcare and beyond.

There are none better than Tom or his teams to help you plan for your companies, our personal role in this new evolving economy, nor who can help you prepare to not only survive but thrive as we go through the next economic catharsis to ride high our next wave.

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