Growing up twice, from senior engineer to basement to success; how to grow a successful IT company with Rick Murphy
Take Aways
- Would you like to jump on the opportunity of a \$40,000 bill to continue to run the franchise that you’re running in the Colorado market? We’ll convert this to a franchise for you, and you just have to come up with \$40,000-a-month for us.”
- “You know, I think I’m gonna pass.” So the next day, I get a call from one of the engineers, because I was out doing a consulting, “Hey. There’s a U-Haul truck here, and they’re loading everything up in the truck.” I’m like, “What? What? You’re kidding.”
- Actually I didn’t decide to start Technowledge until I…probably about a month or so after that. We had a couple small little clients. When I say small, you know, none of them were more than 25 employees in their business. So they needed still some basic IT support and didn’t know what was gonna happen, and they were planning to go shop for another vendor. I’m thinking, “Yeah, sure. I’ll kind of help you.” It kind of dawned on me. Where am I gonna go get my next paycheck from? Right?
- It’d almost be like growing up twice, is best way I can put that. My comment, back around the early time when I started the company, is I would tell my clients, “You know, look it. If any of my guys can’t figure it out, the bus stops here. I’ll get it done. That’s what I do.” Right? Well, there’s only one of me. I learned that really fast. That statement, while very strong, can only be upheld by the physicality of my ability to be in multiple places at one time.
- We actually have positioned the company where we’re finalizing the term that we like to call “business in a box.” What I mean by that is we’ve literally decided to go into the industry and create a standard, measurable line of service for everyone else to be able to measure off of
- if you look at a typical business, there are top one or two things that you can bring to the table that really affect their bottom line. What would you say those one or two things might be?
- When I first talk with a company, I’ll usually take the laundry list and acknowledge it. But generally my next followup question is, “Tell me about your dream and your vision,” kind of like what we’re sitting here today. Why’d you get involved? Why do you do what you do? When I understand that, it gives us a magnitude of wealth of knowledge on appropriate solutions to recommend.
- When we do the correct research and development, and we test all of these founded solutions in security and integration, way easier for me to turn around and say, “This is what you can expect.” In addition to that, by doing those, we save the average client anywhere between 20% to 50% off of what their current monthly spend is.
- One of the most enlightening moments for me, having to have the conversations I never expected to have in my life with some of my own personal collectors. Right? It was also probably one of the most best experience I went through, because it helped me to really focus on not only money management, but also client management, and they really do go hand-in-hand, if you’re a business owner, and especially if you’re running a cash-only business.
- I always ask myself, whether I’m having a great day or whether I’m having a bad day, “What, right now in this moment, is your willingness to learn, grow, and change?” And if it’s not 100%, you’re not 100% convicted and present in whatever it is you’re dealing with. That’s not fair, not only to you, but anybody else that’s involved.
that sense of urgency and that critical thinking, I think, is what’s really delivered that awesome service, that people want to deal with our company. - I’ve been putting in things where we’re measuring where we’re at each month, as a company, not only financially, but also with clients, letting and having those conversations with my staff. What makes these clients that we have the great clients?
- If there’s one thing I would strongly recommend everybody do, get up in the morning, and before you do anything, get a couple drops of lemon water or a lemon and put it in 8 ounces of water. Drink two of those, if you can, every morning, before you do anything. The energy, the amount of great things that come into the body from turning it from a…into an alkaline-based environment, rather than a non-alkaline-based environment, makes all sorts of problems go away.
We say, at our office, all the time, “Emergency will trump importance every time, hands down.” Right? Fire. 911. They’ll take care of it.
Show Notes
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