Jim Ball: call center hits home for 4,600 workers.

• Author: Bronikowski, Lynn
• Position: Executive edge

The sign on Jim Ball's door reads "Mr. Wizard," and that says a lot about the chief architect of Golden-based Alpine Access Inc. The outsourced call center he founded in 1998 employs 4,600 home-based agents across the nation, including 2,500 in Colorado.

"My staff put that on my door because I don't believe in nameplates. They just seem so bureaucratic," laughs Ball, who grew up as an Air Force brat, earned his master's in chemical engineering from the University of Colorado at Denver, worked in the oil industry during the 1980s and re-tooled during the bust days by earning a law degree at the University of Denver in just 2 1/2 years while working full time.

With his engineering, science and law background, Texaco came calling, hiring him as an environmental lawyer in its Houston headquarters where he stayed for three years.

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"With a legal department of 150 people, it was amazing how little input I was able to have," said Ball, who longed for his days as an engineer helping companies extract oil from older wells and fields in the oil-recovery niche of a giant industry.

"I've always had a certain entrepreneurial spirit about me," said Ball. "As an Air Force brat, we moved around a lot so I knew how to make friends quickly, learn the ropes quickly and learn that things are not always stable. Today I find it strange to meet people who have never been anywhere. I guess people like their little, safe lives, but I was always the opposite of that."

Leaving behind the energy industry as the information highway was taking off, Ball would help found Innovative Services of America, a bricks-and-mortar call center that he helped sell after five years.

"I left the company on a Friday and by Monday was on a beach in Mexico with a pad where I sketched out the design for Alpine Access," he said. "I had a unique opportunity to start something on my own, to build an infrastructure...