We were lucky to catch up with Charles Henson recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Charles, thanks for joining us today. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.
Scaling a small business is hard to do… Knowing when to hire that first marketing person, sales person, bookkeeper, first tech or assistant. Things that they don’t teach you is that you have to measure Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) to ensure you are ready to grow/add an employee. Do I have enough gross profit margin (should be >65%) and the higher the better. We started with part time employees as costs was lower, benefits wasn’t needed and we could try out these new hires until we were sure they were in the right seat and a good culture fit. Other KPI’s for us included tech utilization as we didn’t want to have employee burnout and if they are overworked, there is a less than desirable client experience for our clients. We started with a couple part time techs and a part time bookkeeper and eventually we stalled and the growth flatlined. We continued on for a couple years with no growth and no new employees. We were introduced to a marketing program specific for Managed Service Providers (I.T. Companies). We tried to do the marketing ourselves but we would get new business and too busy to do more marketing causing our flatline to be more of a hills and valley trajectory. We hired a single mother as part time marketing person and she was consistent in getting our brand in front of the right business audience. After only six months, we needed new tech’s as well as she went full time and asked for an assistant. The marketing was and still is the key to our business growth. We have increased sales and today we have 24 team members who are all full time employees.
Charles, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I was working in a factory and there were some automated machines performing basic functions, when this machine went down, the whole production stopped. They would have a guy fly in from IBM to work on the computer to troubleshoot and watching him work amazed me. I had a few conversations with him about technology and where all he traveled around the US working on these computers. My thought was, as businesses start depending more on computers, there will need to be people trained to fix them. With that I used the Army G.I. bill to help me get through a 2 year degree and obtained my Associates Degree. I started as a part time tech at INFO Computer, known today as Nashville Computer in which I now own. The business owner was a true mentor and took me under his wing showing and training me on all things business. I became his partner and eventually purchased the business from him. As the computer business continued to evolve it was apparent that cyber crime was becoming a huge problem and as many tools as we could put on computers to protect people, it was the people who would circumvent the systems and cause damage and infections. With the increasing rise of cyber theft, we focused on educating users/people on how to operate a computer and the dangers of clicking on links or being persuaded to do things that would cause the computers harm and in most cases, loss of data and or ransomware. If we can help educate people on what to look out for, we can prevent them from falling victim to cyber criminals. We drive cares in a defensive position, looking for pedestrians, bicyclist, other cars/trucks and we use caution by wearing a seatbelt. These all seem like common sense once you have driven for a while. This is how we want users to use a computer, cautiously looking over all e-mailed links or watching out for that to good to be true promise and even the hey I need you to do this quick task… Slow down and think through what is being asked and do you feel it is putting information at risk.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
Once we entered into the world of marketing, we found that just testimonials wasn’t enough to close new business. Everyone has a testimonial or two. What we needed to do was set ourselves apart from all of the other Managed Service Providers (I.T. Companies) that seem like a commodity service. I joined HARO (Help A Reporter Out) and started responding to news requests. This allowed me to be interviewed for some notable websites like Wired, Bank of America, Dell, and countless others. Not only would they use my comments in their stories, they would put a link to my website which helped my organic traffic with the major search engines. I would use the articles in our marketing and even send snippets during the sale, typically after the first meeting. This allowed me to set myself apart as an educator and spokesperson within my industry. I went on to tweet ideas to local TV channels and became to go to person for technology news clips. I used these in my marketing as well. I spoke to my vendors and did webinars with them, they wrote articles on how I used their technology and eventually IT industry vendors started paying me to speak at conferences across the U.S. Using this knowledge, we started doing webinars and seminars. Attendee’s of these seminars would often ask if we could speak to their members. This allowed me to do speaking engagements where I wasn’t responsible for getting people to attend, I would just show up and do my speech on the dangers of cyber crime. This publicity has allowed me to become an International award winning speaker doing keynotes as far away as Dubai. I also self authored a book for the IT industry focusing on how to become more secure and sell security services. This book is an 11 country Amazon Best seller. I use this not only to build credibility to prospects but to show them that I am an educator to my fellow IT business owners. I was also in the documentary on Amazon Prime called Cybercrime.
How do you keep your team’s morale high?
Understanding that a culture within your business is like a living organism. People want to know that they matter and that their opinion counts. As we continued to grow, we would look to our team to collaborate on venders and product offerings. We would pair up or work in groups to evaluate and do demo’s of products to protect our clients or backup their data. By having these conversations, we talked through the pros and cons as well as costs concerns. Allowing the team to help choose, gives them buy-in to the product and more importantly the desire to ensure they learn it, and set it up for success. Any time we bring on a new product, we have the team work together and get trained prior to using it. After each training, we will do a team event such as a movie, go to a game room, do competitive online gaming, go-kart racing or other team building activity. This makes the learning fun and allows the team to continue to bond. Every morning we start the day with a daily huddle to let everyone know what we did yesterday, what we are doing today and what our top priority of the day is. This allows us to all share with each other what is going on in each of our worlds and if there is anything that may affect another team member. We can also talk about any issues or items we are stuck on. Once a week we do a weekly huddle and share the business highs and lows as well as personal highs and lows. This allows us to know if someone is dealing with a situation and to have empathy or compassion for them during a rough time. Our Core values spell out EPPIC Family and we are a family first organization!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.NashvilleComputer.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_charleshenson/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FollowCharlesHenson
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/followcharles/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/NashvillePC
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@CharlesHenson
- Other: Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07P93725T?ingress=0&visitId=9699c4c8-2dd9-47b1-ace4-5aea4d7a2e0d&store_ref=ap_rdr&ref_=ap_rdr Amazon Prime Movie Cyber Crime: https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B07VF7FLC2/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_r IMDB Page: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm10867480/