1. What have you found most challenging as a leader of a small or medium enterprise?

It’s ALL about people! It starts with our clients. I am obsessed with achieving our mission: “to make organizations BETTER with talent, technology and outstanding service.” Headcount is not how my clients measure success. They want talent, not bodies.

We win new business because owners are frustrated with other IT companies who: have proven to be undependable, can’t prevent issues; are slow to resolve problems or even show-up, and who have repeatedly proven that they don’t have the right mix of talent and to BETTER their business. While cheap on paper their true cost is WAY too expensive.

2. How did you become a leader of an SME? Can you please briefly tell the story?

I worked for three companies during my career. I was president and CEO for two of my employers. I spent 28 years travelling around the world developing international markets for U.S. food companies and for U.S. cotton, one of America’s largest exports. My wife Martha and I lived in Hong Kong for five years. We started our family there. We moved to Memphis to take a global job.

Finally, I decided to take a leap of faith and become a business owner.

I love technology. It’s a strategic partner to an organization, not a necessary evil/cost. I learned this the hard way during my first president/CEO position. I quickly became an early adopter of technology and used for 28 years to grow and manage global businesses.

Owning a TeamLogic IT franchise here in was a natural fit.

I knew that I did not have the time, talent and treasure to create the technical, financial, marketing, sales and administrative systems required to meet the needs of my clients [for a nonfranchise business]. I also liked the idea of having a comparative advantage over my competition.

The result? I just signed an agreement for another 10 years!

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

Meditation; have coffee and search and learn to keep abreast of the latest business technology trends and other interests; share ideas with my Linked In community; empower, lead and develop my employees, my client's real heroes; think of new ways to delight our customers; administer the business; spend time with my family; watch a show, read, fall asleep. I am an early to bed early to rise kind of guy.

4. What's the most recent significant leadership lesson you've learned?

Be humble and kind are top of my list. Speaking of kind I will never forget Delaine Kittel's leadership lesson. I was in trouble some 40 years ago and she gave me a framed 3x5 card that said "Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent." President Calvin Coolidge

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results By Gary Keller and Jay Papasan

6. How do you build leadership capacity in an SME?

Give everybody a chance to THRIVE! We MUST keep our saws sharp.

I invest 10% of my tech payroll in training. Everyone must earn a technical, compliance or management certification every year. I pay for the tests and give them handsome cash bonuses.

At the end of the day I am in the customer service business. And like leadership, service starts with kindness and empathy. The entire Team trains on caring for the customer with a professional trainer every month.

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader of an SME so far?

For the last year the world has turned upside down by Covid 19. Our normal lives were brought to an abrupt halt. The world we were living in before does not exist anymore. Whether we like it or not we are entering a new world, one filled with new obstacles and thankfully new opportunities.

Key to success is meeting people where they are, offering a solution to the new problems beginning to arise. People do not have money to spend on old problems. People have new problems that need new solutions. For us it has been “Our old computer and communication solutions aren’t meeting our needs. How can you efficiently move my business and employees to the cloud and unifying our communication systems so we can work from anywhere whenever we want?”

I refuse to remain stagnant, holding onto what was my comfortable past. In a world filled with endless unknowns now is our chance to realize that #betterispossible and define what this actually means for our clients.