EvoStream’s President is Community Focused
by Peter Wolsborn
Stephen Joseph is the President of EvoStream Communications, a founder, a family-man, and a member of Boise’s entrepreneurial community. Evostream is a telecommunications brokerage and consultancy, focusing on providing its clients with products and full service IT solutions. Stephen got his start in IT at AT&T Corporate, working from the downtown New York office. “Working with AT&T, a big corporation, was a great learning experience, however I personally felt more of an entrepreneurial spirit,” Stephen said.
Starting & Growing EvoStream
In 2014, after eleven years with the company, he left AT&T and started Evostream. “I began working with large institutions, such as healthcare providers and banks, to improve their communications platforms.” EvoStream Communications started by improving the relationship between the large telecommunication companies and businesses they serviced. EvoStream quickly morphed into not only a brokerage service, but a full IT consultancy. EvoStream began serving businesses across the nation, and Stephen and his family started looking for a new place to call home. “We were living in New Jersey, commuting into New York City, and had landed a big contract on the west coast,” he said. “As we were looking at different places out west to move, Boise became really top of the list.”
Shortly after relocating his wife and two young children, he found Trailhead and has been working there ever since. Trailhead, according to Stephen, has a great working environment and he appreciates having work space in downtown Boise, surrounded by other entrepreneurs and small business owners. He said “I love working with other entrepreneurs because sometimes it can be isolating. As a business owner, you feel like you’re on an island.” He stressed that after working in New York City for 15 years, the entrepreneurial community here in Boise has felt much more inviting and accessible. “I used to have an office on Wall Street when I started my first agency, and it was $7,500 a month for a little office space. When I found out I could get all these resources downtown, central to the city, and be working with other small business owners and entrepreneurs, it was a no-brainer. I’ve been here ever since.”
Part of Trailhead’s mission is to provide mentorship and resources to Boise’s entrepreneurial community. As a seasoned entrepreneur, Stephen has started mentoring other members of the Trailhead community. Lately, he’s been working with Ken Brook and his company AdPrompt as a strategic advisor and investor. “That gives me, as an entrepreneur who’s been in the same industry for 20 plus years, a new exciting project.” He’s invested in other startups in the past, but hasn’t had the opportunity to be involved with anything locally. Working with AdPrompt has been fulfilling, and he’s excited about the new opportunities that he doesn’t think he would have if he was still commuting into New York City every day.
EvoStream is still growing and Stephen is looking forward to the next growth stage of his business. While he has clients across the country, he wants to focus on connecting with businesses right here in the Treasure Valley. “I think the biggest challenge has not been our national expansion, it’s been the Treasure Valley because it’s just a tight knit community and there are some big players that are already invested in this area,” Stephen said. He wants to get closer to the local community. He has customers in California, Colorado, and Washington, but states that “this market has been a little bit tough, so we’re still trying to get integrated and I know that takes time.”
Advice From a Seasoned Entrepreneur
When asked what advice he has for new or aspiring entrepreneurs, this is what Stephen had to say: “What I see today . . . is this survivorship bias. We read books and we listen to Ted Talks about the ultra-successful, the outliers, the people that squeak through. But what we don’t hear about are the people like me, people like the guy who owns the dry cleaner for 30 years and successfully is able to put his kids through college because he was a small business owner. Entrepreneurship means a lot of different things, and it doesn’t mean you need to be Facebook or Tesla. My wife owns a a small charcuterie business with one or two employees. But to her, that’s freedom, that’s entrepreneurship, that’s creativity.”
“Whatever it is you’re trying to do, you have to be persistent, you have to be very consistent, but also you have to do what you love, what you want to do. Don’t think you have to have the next big invention. Entrepreneurship can be very simple.”
Find out more…
EvoStream Communications is a full-service IT solutions provider that helps mid- to large-size organizations design and implement secure and reliable communications networks. To find out more about EvoStream, visit https://www.evo-stream.com/.
Trailhead is a nonprofit with the mission to help entrepreneurs succeed, by providing them with the knowledge, tools, resources and networks they need to take their ideas and ventures to the next level. To find out more about Trailhead, visit https://trailheadboise.org/.
AdPrompt is an AI-powered digital content generation and monetization engine built for creators. To find out more about AdPrompt, visit https://adprompt.ai/.
Savory N Sweets curates artisan style charcuterie boards and boxes. To find out more about Savory N Sweets, visit https://savorynsweets.com/.
Written by Peter Wolsborn. A Lavender Copy creation.