What we talked about
Des Wynne: From knocking on doors in Dublin to leading Lazer Telecom in Portugal, Des charts a candid, practical path to building a resilient last-mile ISP and a culture that ships. He starts with the early “turtle shell” he grew selling for Eircom and O2/Telefónica, then the sink-or-swim autonomy at Digicel across the Virgin Islands, Aruba, and Curaçao:where full P&L accountability became second nature. A detour into aviation at SimTech sharpened his checklist mindset, which he later brought to telecom operations: remember the flow, then back it up with a list so nothing mission-critical slips.
Show notes
Des Wynne started his telecom career being told to go knock on doors of customers who had already left, and who actively disliked the company he represented. That experience of selling when the word “no” is the starting point became the foundation of everything he built later as a CEO.
What we covered
- Starting as a door-to-door sales rep for Eircom in Ireland, where selling to churned customers taught him that rejection is just the beginning of objection handling. He carried that resilience through Telefonica/O2, then to Digicel across the British Virgin Islands, Aruba, and Curaçao, where on day one he was handed car keys, a laptop, and a Blackberry and told to find his own house.
- At Lazer Telecom in Portugal, Des inherited an order-to-cash process that took ten days from contract signing to service activation. The board told him it should be two days, so he tore up the rulebook completely and rebuilt from scratch. Today, a customer who signs on a Tuesday has an engineer at their door by Thursday at five o’clock.
- His advice on 90-day plans: take them with a pinch of salt. He wrote a detailed 15-to-20-point plan before joining and later described it as “total rubbish.” The most important thing a new leader can do is follow the order-to-cash process end to end before touching anything else.
- On change resistance, he recounts an employee who told him they had seen CEOs come and go with big plans and nothing changed. Des’s response: “You’re either on the bus or you’re not on the bus, but the door swings both ways.” That same person became a strong contributor, but the conversation required a firm, clear line.
- From his time at SimTech Aviation, he brought the aviation checklist mentality to telecom: pilots use memory items and back them up with a written checklist to ensure nothing is missed. Des keeps a red book with him at all times and crosses off items as he goes, carrying unfinished tasks to the next week’s list.
- During a storm that hit Portugal, Des activated a full resilience protocol, proactive customer communication, color-coded network monitoring dashboards, and clear role assignments across the technical team, only for the storm to take a left turn and skip the country entirely. The preparation was still worth it: when a different storm hit without warning 18 months earlier, there had been casualties and real damage, much of it from poles falling on waterlogged ground.
About Des
Des Wynne is the CEO of Lazer Telecom in Portugal, where he owns the full P&L and day-to-day operations. He previously served as Group Sales Director at SimTech Aviation and spent seven years with Digicel across the Dutch Caribbean, building and leading multi-market operations.
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/des-wynne-557b4718
- Website: https://lazertelecom.com
Episode 76 of the PreVetted Podcast.