We recently connected with Anne Tarantino and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Anne, thanks for joining us today. One deeply underappreciated facet of entrepreneurship is the kind of crazy stuff we have to deal with as business owners. Sometimes it’s crazy positive sometimes it’s crazy negative, but crazy experiences unite entrepreneurs regardless of industry. Can you share a crazy story with our readers?

The management team and a client were sitting in our boardroom. We’re all in there discussing potential projects we would be working on. Each person was so focused. We were brainstorming ideas on new projects and how they would be handled. We were doing a workflow. Everyone was participating. It was one of those meetings that was not a waste of time. Everyone was fully engaged. The door busts open and here is an employee out of breath: “The Department of Homeland Security is here there is an active shooter” I think everyone flew out of their chair and yelled “What do we do what do we do where is the shooter? Everyone was in shock and terror. We hit the lights in the boardroom and we stood there frozen. The 2 men from “Homeland Security” walked in calm as can be and there were so many questions “Where is the shooter”? Is everyone ok? We didn’t hear anything. ”
Those 2 men, were looking like the whole room had 3 heads. “What are you talking about?” By this time the employee had disappeared. I ran into the operations center, found her, and said “Where is the shooter?” She said, “I don’t know.” What do you mean you don’t know I said you ran upstairs telling us there is an active shooter, the guys from Homeland Security are here what are you talking about?” Luckily someone from Sales came strolling in like it was any other day and said “The shooter is in Michigan.” What had happened was that this salesperson had cold-called a company. The owner of that company didn’t want a cold call so to get the salesperson off the phone he told her there was an active shooter and hung up. She in turn got scared called the police in Michigan to report it. The moment the salesperson hung up, these 2 men came in and the other employee assumed they were from Homeland Security and the shooter was in our building. As it turned out the 2 men were from Ice and they served me with papers to turn over all of the employee’s original files to make sure we didn’t have any illegal aliens. I told them I’d make copies and they said “no we need originals and we will get them back to you. I asked when they said when they get back. In the meantime, the client left since they had to catch a flight. They weren’t too happy we had to finish this over the phone via conference call when the purpose of their visit was to finish the plan. The bookkeeper and I had to go through all of the HR files and the men from ICE had to watch us so we wouldn’t change anything. They left with the files and about 2 months later I got the files back. They gave me a “warning” because my file had an outdated copy of my driver’s license. All of that terror really for an outdated copy of my drivers license. I kept thinking how I could protect everyone.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Tech was the last thing I thought I’d be in and fall in love with. I’m a Gen Xer. We didn’t grow up with tech in school. I was in my late 20s when PCs were all the rage but not affordable. I thought they were pretty cool, but again, not affordable.
I started my career doing collections in a hospital, then a huge bank call center and I moved to a few collection agencies and law firms. As I moved up to supervisor, manager, and director I was responsible for more tech.
I got the tech bug then. I had never seen a “computer room” or typed much on a keyboard. I had to take typing in high school and wasn’t a fan at all.
In 2007 my good friend and mentor started a tech business. She was a network engineer and probably one of the smartest people I have ever met. She thought I’d be good in sales. When you think of collections to sales it seems impossible but honestly, I learned great people skills and how to read people from that career that transitioned me to sales. The people side of it wasn’t the problem. I had no clue what I was selling.
My friend was one of those really smart people when I asked her questions she couldn’t dumb it down enough for me. There were lots of laughs when she had to give me analogies, but it helped. You see before AI, Cloud, virtualization and all the fancy software hardware was what businesses had. My friend would be out in the field fixing someone’s server and she was sent the wrong part or parts that didn’t work. She was bound and determined as much as she could that she would never let that happen at least under her watch.
We sold servers, storage, switches and parts to each of those. She touched every piece of hardware on the way in and every piece of hardware on the way out. So I watched, took down part numbers and machine models and I would study everyone, what they did why did they what they did, etc. Were were all about the urgency, the customer and keeping their business up and running. Companies could NOT be down.
I started to market and that was a blast. We came up with creative little flyers that customers loved.
As tech changed so did we. We offered more software on top of our hardware always keeping in mind what the customer wanted and needed. We didn’t just add enterprise software on our hardware to make a bigger sale.
I was lucky enough to buy into that company years later.
My friend decided to sell and I thought it might be time to do something different. I did for a while, but I still loved tech and many of my customers were still calling me. A good friend who had a background in IT was doing energy consulting and needed someone to own the tech side of it. And that’s how Seebury IT got started.
Now I take those same principles from Velocity Tech Solutions and add more engineers so we can design solutions that customers need and will help their business. We don’t charge clients for our engineer’s time. We want to make sure every need, and every solution is a fit and planned to limit any surprises. That’s what sets us apart from other IT companies. Business needs to thrive and grow. If a company gives us the honor of considering SeeburyIT for their IT needs we make sure to use every resource we have to present the best solution we see fit all while collaborating with the client or potential client.

Conversations about M&A are often focused on multibillion dollar transactions – but M&A can be an important part of a small or medium business owner’s journey. We’d love to hear about your experience with selling businesses.

When we sold Velocity Tech Solutions I was a minority owner. I didn’t own enough to have much say but I think we had taken it to where our skill levels would allow us to take it. It was time for a new owner to come in and hopefully grow it.
I will say there are several things to consider.
1.) Make sure all agreements with any partners are in writing.
2.) Always make sure your books are clean.
3.) Always make sure your bookkeeper is someone you can trust
4.) Always have a CPA. Bookkeepers are great and necessary, but they are NOT CPA’s.
5.) Always have an exit strategy.
6.) Plan your exit strategy 3 years in advance
7.) Your company is unsaleable if it can only run with you in it. Make sure you have a right-hand person who knows what you know and can run the company.
8.) Before you sell, talk to a business broker (I became a business broker to help people because it is tough)
9.) Owning a business is like raising a child it’s very emotional and all those emotions can stop you from making good decisions
10.) In most cases this is the biggest financial decision you ever make. There are huge tax ramifications. If you fail to plan for that it could throw off the plans you make for the rest of your life.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

I was sent to my first Microsoft World Partners conference in Washington D.C. I was maybe 2 years in to the tech world and felt I still had a lot to learn. Before the conference, you were allowed to pick companies and set up 15 min meetings with them. Kind of like speed dating. I picked Dell because we sold a lot of Dell product on the secondary market. I had heard Dell would buy a ton of their gear back so they could stock their warehouse for folks that needed parts from End of Life hardware. I wanted to be that company but we were so small and only in business maybe 3 or 4 years. They agreed to meet with me. I had to shake out all of that sales anxiety so I was grateful I had about 3 weeks to figure out what I was going to say.
The big day came and there were 3 people from Dell and one of me. I asked for their business and explained why I was asking and how we could help take care of their customers more quickly and efficiently. They thanked them and I walked away thinking they were being kind. When I got back to my desk at 8:15am on the following Monday, my phone rang and it was Dell. They needed a ton of End of Life machines built I had no clue how we were going to do it since we didn’t have any but I told them we’d get it done with all the confidence in the world. (as I was sweating bullets) They gave me the specific specs. I ran to my friend, Kay the IT genius and I could barely speak in her calm tone she’s like “we’ll get this done” and we did. After we pulled that rabbit out of a hat, we were the go to company Dell’s help desk would refer to when they couldn’t get parts or machines and companies were down. We grew about 3x each year for the next 3 years.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://seebury.com/
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Image Credits

Image credits go to Ciera Wallace