Never Stop Being A Student Of Business
by Jeremy Nulik
A business riddle: What object does even the fittest of young entrepreneurs sometimes have trouble lifting? Going to the gym and eating a protein-loaded diet won’t even help to build enough strength. What is this object?
David Brown, president of Datotel, a St. Louis-based IT outsourcing company, is all too familiar with the answer. By picking up the phone (the answer to the riddle) and asking successful entrepreneurs for advice, counsel or some company over coffee, Brown has been able to build his business to over $5 million in annual revenue in just five years. But not asking for help early on is a mistake Brown sees many entrepreneurs make.
“Other people are happy to tell you their story of how they got to where they are,” says Brown. “Entrepreneurs need to pick up the phone earlier rather than later. You’ll get a bunch of nos, but there are plenty of successful business owners ready to tell you their story. If I can avoid making the same mistake or learn how they grew, then it is valuable. So pick up the phone and dial. Meet people and network. You have to get out there and do it.”
This eagerness to learn from others has enabled Brown to expand from four to 38 employees. However, that expansion has led to challenges.
“Dealing with change as we have grown is the biggest challenge,” says Brown. “Talking to four people was easy, but when you have 15 and suddenly everybody is doing specialized tasks, it was harder to know what was going on. So now we have quarterly meetings to keep everyone apprised of our strategy.”
Rarely do the words “quarterly meetings” inspire action and vision for anyone who has spent more than one day in the corporate world. The mere mention of those words is enough to trigger narcolepsy among some executives. However, Brown makes sure these events are not your average sit-down-at-a-table-and-listen-to-words-like-“synergy” meetings. They are intentionally fun.
“Each quarter has a theme, and this quarter is the ‘Rumble in the Jungle,’” says Brown. “It’s based on the Foreman/Ali fight. Those characters are an analogy for quarterly business goals. There are also 12 rounds in the fight that correspond with the 12 weeks in a quarter, so we have different targets for each round. We have music, visuals and everything to make the theme complete. For this last one, the leadership even dressed up as boxers.”
Brown has found that making things fun is a way to help messages stick. Other themes for the quarterly meetings have included ‘Top Gun.’ The leadership team dressed as naval aviators, and the meeting took place in a hangar downtown.
The members of Brown’s leadership team can also be found at 7 a.m. each weekday phone conferencing in for their Daily Adrenaline Meeting. Each person discusses his or her goals, activities and “stuck points” so everyone can get past obstacles early in the day.
In addition, throughout the workday, Datotel employees can take advantage of a variety of communication tools including an internal blog, Twitter, an instant messenger and wikis to learn more about the company and to communicate with one another.
“You can’t communicate too frequently with a team,” says Brown. “They will make better decisions if they know more. So we take advantage of technology to make that communication as smooth as possible.”