It’s the people – employees and clients alike. Our team is truly amazing! I am over joyed when I stop and think about who is doing this with us. Many are close friends — I even call them extended family. We have such fun times together and it transcends the positions we hold or roles we play. Additionally, our clients are amazing. We continue to build new relationships with our clients and even develop friendships. We often talk outside of work, play a round of golf and communicate through Facebook or text messages.
My entire life has been focused on relationships, and without a doubt I couldn’t do this alone. I yearn to work with, involve and learn from others. Often, I find myself thinking, “how do we get this person or that person involved?” I come across someone I haven’t spoken to in a while or meet someone new who has the energy, experience and ethics that are aligned with mine, and when this happens, I immediately think, “how can we work together? How can we create something bigger than ourselves?”
I often find myself having difficulty sleeping not because I’m stressed out or worried, but instead because I have so much excitement and energy for this business and what is to come. I’d call that passion and I’m happy to lose sleep over passion versus stress (which I think we’ve all experienced). We work with some really great clients and it’s both challenging and exciting helping them solve their business problems. What’s even more exciting is when a past or current client calls to just brainstorm how we could possibly help them. No formal commitment or contract in place necessarily, but instead, a genuine call to brainstorm what the future could like with us both in it together.
I’m also very passionate about my family. In addition to spending time with my wife and children, I maintain a very close relationship with my parents. My wife and I are also very involved in helping raise our grandson. Lastly, I’ve discovered a new passion in giving back. I look forward to the day when my work shifts from managing the business and client engagement to focusing more on giving back to the community and our service men and women who protect this great nation.
I was fortunate enough to have been introduced to computer programming in the 6th grade (1984) way back when the Apple IIe and TRS-80s were the only games in town. The grade school I attended had a summer computer programming class that I joined and I fell in love. Shortly after when IBM introduced their first personal computer my parents invested in one and I was off to the races. I immersed myself into learning everything I could about computer hardware and programming. At times, I’d even pretend to be sick so I could miss school to stay home and program. Years later when I graduated high school, I was fortunate enough to have an opportunity to work at TRW in their Engineering Visualization Center (EVC) focused on 3D animation/simulation. I lived with my parents, went to college full-time and worked full-time. I absolutely loved it. I learned so much on-the-job and was at the age/position that I had ignorance to politics and bureaucracy at work. I just focused on learning, working well with others and doing the right thing. While I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was with the EVC that I learned the fundamental skills of relationships, producing high-quality deliverables within the expected timeframe and business development. Being an internal service provider to the company, the EVC’s budget required that half of our funding come from other internal groups (e.g. billable projects). So, myself and others found ourselves working closely with internal customers and expanding their business with us while also having to find new internal customers and projects to support. Even though we weren’t a profit center, we did focus on quality of work and producing deliverables within schedule.
I eventually earned my B.S. in Computer Science from California State Long Beach and from there spent the next 20 years working for a handful of companies ranging from very established Fortune 100 firms to, a dot-com and two different start-ups. I found that over time my passion wasn’t that of being a technical performer, but instead, working with people. As such my focus became leadership, management and eventually client relationships.
