Nick Gant, President and Founder of Gant Systems, revisits the early years of Gant Systems and the challenges that have shaped his company into the successful Managed Service Provider it is today.
Over the last 16 years, Nick Gant and his team of IT problem solvers has changed the definition of technology support for businesses and nonprofits. Gant Systems has pioneered a proactive approach to managed IT that supports organizational growth through scalable IT infrastructure.
1. Tell me about how you got interested in IT. What was the driving factor for founding Gant Systems?
Nick Gant: I really stumbled into IT from a young age. I used to drive my dad crazy, dismantling expensive electronics around the house, and he'd come home from work and I'd have to piece them back together—and they usually worked. So he finally started asking me to fix things and I just had a knack for figuring out electronics and fixing things. That was a natural progression into computers, and really where it all began.
As for the driving factor for founding Gant Systems, I had several different careers, both in small business and corporate settings. The last job I had before starting Gant Systems was with a large national corporation with 15,000 employees, and I’d been promoted several times through that organization. The closer to the top I moved in my career, the more I realized that's not what I wanted. What I really wanted was the ability and the authority to choose who I worked with. And that was the primary driving factor in founding Gant Systems.
Basically, it was an ability to leverage what I was good at, which is putting technology to work helping people, combined with qualities for my career that I wanted the ability to say yes or no to.
2. Gant Systems was “born” the same year that iPhones were born. Were you an early adopter or did you hang on to your Blackberry for a while?
Nick Gant: I've been a long time adopter of the iPhone. I think I was probably on version two, version three of the iPhone at that time. But up to then, I was holding on to my BlackBerry— tried the Droid a few times—but I’m an iPhone person.
3. How has the company evolved since its founding? How has technology evolved? What hasn’t changed?
Nick Gant: Part of this is to understand where the company started. The first three years of the business I was operating out of a guest room in my house. I had no employees. But as word of mouth kept growing the customer base, I realized that I needed to turn it into a true growth-oriented business, or I just needed to stay as a small consultancy. And I did have a vision for what the business would eventually look like, so I took that step. I hired an accounts payable person, then passed on accounts receivable, then eventually hired some technical people.
Like most startups, we were in the business of taking money, but that didn't mean we were making any profit. In startup mode, if somebody is willing to give you a dollar, you take it and you figure out how to deliver something that they find value in. And as you mature as a business, you start to learn what to say no to, though we've done a lot of different things.
I was talking to a professor at the University of Memphis a few years ago, and I told him that I’ve had the luxury of failing in business four or five times—it's just that nobody knows because they’re all called Gant Systems. He told me if I had ever attended college, I would have learned in school that that’s called a pivot. He gave me an “atta boy” for it and said when something isn’t working, you decide to stop doing it and change directions.
Anyway, since 2007 we've done a myriad of things—from staffing to software development to websites. But in 2015 we really took a hard line, got focused—really focused—on what we wanted to do.
We made the decision that we wanted to focus on being a Managed Service Provider and signed our first customer in February 2016 as a Managed Services company. We provided notice to all customers that we're discontinuing other lines of business, and fully committed to being an MSP. And that's what we did.
In terms of how technology has evolved, I would say the biggest thing is risk. I never got into this line of work thinking that I would have as significant a role to play in security or disaster recovery. In the early days of my career, if you were an IT person, there were other people who handled disaster recovery. Security really didn't have much of a posture in the industry. And that has completely changed—they go hand in hand now.
I'd say anybody that's over 35 in IT has probably recognized that shift in their career if they started early enough. I started working in IT when I was 18, so I’ve definitely seen that.
4. Your business follows the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). What drew you to the EOS business model? How has it made growth possible for your company?
Nick Gant: What attracted me to it was feeling trapped under the burden of work and I didn't really have a good place to process everything that needed to be done. When I was looking for a system that could help smooth things out and streamline processes, what I found with EOS was a system that served as a destination for all the issues that were occurring within the organization.
Now, instead of everything being ad hoc in my calendar for 40 hours a week, everything has a defined parking lot, which means it opens up all this additional time on my calendar so I can go do other things.
I tell my team it is a framework of freedom, because it crams all the obligations into very specific processes or systems, which then opens up the rest of your time to go invent, wander, do different parts of your job.
5. What do you tell young entrepreneurs trying to get into the technology industry? Thoughts on degrees versus certifications?
Nick Gant: What I tell young entrepreneurs trying to get into technology is that they've got to button up their people skills. Most people get into technology because they have a strength and a capability within the space, but that only gets you so far in your career.
It's your ability to maintain and carry on interpersonal relationships, how you relate and communicate with people, that advance your career or prevent you from getting fired. Very candidly, it's always the technical capabilities that will get you the job. It's almost never the technical capability that will get you fired.
I never went to college, so I went to work for a subsidiary of IBM full time the day after I graduated high school. And throughout my career, I've never found that a degree or certification can tell you about a candidate, their capability, their interpersonal relationships. Honestly, it can be more misleading than an indicator of potential success. So that's been my experience.
6. You’ve built a community in your teams at Gant Systems. How do you create and nurture that environment?
Nick Gant: There is a line from EOS that resonates with me, “You can always go fastest alone, but you go furthest together.” That is 100% taken out of the book “Traction” by Gino Wickman, and I've just seen that quote reinforced over and over as far as how to build good teams.
A coach sees your potential and helps you get there. When you can start to build teams from a coaching perspective, then you start to get the kind of buoyant output of what a team can do and deliver.
As far as creating and nurturing that team environment, there's a couple of tried and true principles there. Praise in public and having those candid, tough conversations in private. That's always a big thing. But it really just revolves around figuring out what level of engagement your team members have. Do they know what's expected of them at work? Do they have the tools that they need to do their job? And do they feel empowered to make decisions and offer opinions? Do they feel like their opinions count? Those are all really important things.
If you do that and you establish good communications, you encourage people to cross collaborate, then you build really powerful teams.
7. What’s your vision for the next 16 years at Gant Systems?
Nick Gant: I intend to exit the company in 2035. I don't intend to exit my equity position. Really, what I'm trying to do now is groom and develop the next series of leaders that are going to take the company over when I don't plan to be there. 2035 is when my youngest son turns 18, so I plan to take a step back then and help my children establish themselves as honorable and capable adults.
8. You’re active in volunteer organizations like the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation & Clean Memphis. Why is it important to you to be involved in the Memphis community?
Nick Gant: That’s the way that I'm wired, I like helping somebody meet their potential—like I mentioned coaching earlier.
I see potential in organizations that do good things like CF Foundation and Clean Memphis. They want help and they need help, and if they are open to it, then I am willing to be a contributor. I do this with anything. Good organizations that do good things for good people, then of course I want to be a part of it.
9. What do you do for fun?
Nick Gant: What I do for fun is what I call tractor therapy. I have a farm, and I literally love being on my tractor and moving dirt or doing, like, hard "grunty" work. And part of it is, in the world of IT, you never actually finish anything. Projects don’t end, they transition to maintenance and management. When you're on a farm and you finish a project, it's done.You leave it, you set, you go on, do something else. And you can see and appreciate that “done” project for years on end. I also like the small, quick win nature of being done with something that doesn’t drag on. It can be 100 degrees outside, and I'll have a perfectly great day bush hogging a field.