Lexington, KY - When coworkers become lifelong friends, it's a pretty cool thing. When they turn into business partners, it's slightly more unusual, but still very cool. Marcus Simpson, Jeff Thompson and Tina Williams were working for a computer company in the early 2000s and a few years later decided they could run their own information technology business.
On May 1, 2006, the coworkers formed Technology Consulting Group America. "We wanted to bring enterprise business solutions to small and medium businesses," said Simpson, "and be a small company's outsourcing provider."
"A month before we left, we were planning," said Williams, "lining up investors, informing customers, getting a business license, so we could get up and going."
Angel investors contributed $25,000 for TCG America's start. "We had a handful of clients and did a lot of crossing our fingers, a lot of praying," said Simpson. In January 2009, they made their last payment back to the investors. "It says something about a company to be debt-free and sustaining itself," said Simpson.
Last September, TCG was named Commerce Lexington's 2008 Minority Business of the Year. The TCG partners make note of this award in their marketing efforts on their own site. They also attend networking events, and once a year, they have Microsoft or Cisco trucks come to their office for technology demonstrations.
"We have a core set of solutions and vendors we represent," said Simpson. TCG uses Barracuda, Cisco, HP and Microsoft for their customers' technological productivity, security and mobility. "We also provide managed services so customers don't have to pay thousands of dollars for servers, for example," said Simpson. "For a monthly fee, we provide off-site backup, spam filtering, hosting, and soon we'll provide applications."
"We are getting ready to launch a hosted exchange e-mail server," added Williams. "Large companies usually have Microsoft exchange, but small businesses don't get the benefit of it."
Williams got a four-year IT degree in three and a half years at Sullivan University. By 2000, she was an account manager and did some tech support for the Lexington office of a Louisville computer company.
Simpson earned a degree in computer science at Kentucky State University in 1987. After college he worked for a computer corporation three blocks from the Capitol in Washington, D.C., for five years. "I found out that problems aren't really with computers; the problems are with people," he said. In 1993, he moved back to Kentucky, as an account manager for a computer company in Nicholasville. "I used to be a pretty good technician until I went into sales," he admitted. In 2002, he joined the Lexington business where Williams and Thompson were already working.
Thompson has half a dozen kinds of computer certifications and lives in Louisville. Simpson and Williams have an office in Lexington, where they receive shipments and customers can drop off equipment. They're also able to do much of their work on laptops away from the office. All three partners sell and perform tech support, but Simpson specializes in marketing, Williams in operations and Thompson in technology.
"Customers all want the same things," said Simpson. "They want their network secure, always up and running, and they want to be productive." His first piece of advice for all businesspeople is to renew those antivirus programs. "We've seen people who haven't renewed their subscriptions in years," he said.
His TCG sales pitch to business owners is, "You have the same problems as IMB and Dell; you face the same viruses, the same group of hackers, the same outdated computer stuff. They have an IT staff, but you have three choices. You can hire a full-time IT person, roll up your sleeves and do it yourself instead of spending time with your customers, or you can outsource to a third-party service provider."
Simpson predicts that online access will become the norm within the next few years. "Everyone has an individual computer and information is on the hard drive," he said. "When it crashes you're in trouble, unless it's backed up, and even then you're down for at least a day or more." With online storage, it doesn't matter if your computer crashes because you can use another one to access your data. "The $2,000 notebooks are not going to be around," he said. You'll be able to run applications online and use an old computer to do so.
Being techies, Williams admitted it's not uncommon to see e-mails from one another late at night.
"When you enjoy what you do, you can work late," said Simpson. "You're not working for a company; you are the company."
To learn more about TCG America visit www.tcgamerica.com.
Kathie Stamps is the co-founder of www.ISBO.biz, an online directory of independent/small business owners.