James Riley WINS by Balancing Entrepreneurship and a Successful Marriage

What if we told you that being an engineer and running a successful business is not only possible but can also be enjoyable?

Carrie Richardson, Partner at Richardson & Richardson Consulting, is your host for this episode of  What's Important Now.

Meet James Riley, a remarkable engineer-turned-entrepreneur, who has grown a small IT services startup in Tucson, Arizona, into a thriving and growing business.

This episode of WIN takes you on James's fascinating journey, from his  transition into entrepreneurship to the strategic planning and compliance measures that have propelled his company's growth. We also delve into the immense importance of technology in an increasingly compliance-driven market.

But there's more to James's story.

Alongside building a successful business, he's also nurtured an amazing marriage-business partnership with his wife for 26 years.

Together, they've managed not only to create a profitable organization but one that helps individuals find and fulfill purpose in their lives.

Get ready for some invaluable insights on balancing a business and a marriage, the future vision for his company, and the mission that drives their shared enterprise.

If you're seeking wisdom from a process-driven business owner who's also focused on being an incredible life partner, this episode is an absolute must-listen!

Want to connect with James?  The JNR Networks website is here!

Have a business WIN you'd like to share with the world?  We're always interested in interviewing business owners with great stories!!!  Schedule a podcast recording here! 

Carrie Richardson and Ian Richardson host the WIN Podcast - What's Important Now?

Carrie helps businesses improve their sales and marketing teams.

Ian is certified in Eagle Center For Leadership Making A Difference, Paterson StratOp, and LifePlan.

Learn more at www.foxcrowgroup.com

Book time with them here: https://randr.consulting/connect

Be a guest on WIN! We host successful entrepreneurs who share advice with other entrepreneurs on how to build, grow or sell a business using examples from their own experience.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:53

Good afternoon. My name is Carrie Richardson and I am one half of the partnership Richardson and Richardson, Welcome to win. My guest today is James Riley. James started his managed IT services business about 20 years ago in Tucson, Arizona. He says that he stumbled into being a business owner. He was an engineer and a technologist and he felt like he could do a better job than other people at supporting businesses in the Tucson area. I want to learn a little bit more today about how that happened and why he described it as stumbling. Jim, welcome to win. I'm really happy to have you here today. Tell us how you started your business.

Speaker 2: 1:34

Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here and hopefully can share some insight that helps other people. So yeah, I was working IT. I started out doing retail stuff and then moved into consulting Working, did some in-house IT work and then did consulting through other contractors and just kept looking at realizing that I think there's stuff we're leaving on the table, we're not really aligning with our clients well, and so ended up taking the leap and started my own business. For the first 10 years, I was really an engineer that owned the company. I owned a job and I was that engineer that owned it.

Speaker 2: 2:12

So, about 10 years in, a friend of mine was talking with me and he said James, what are you doing? Are you running a business or are you just an engineer? Not that an engineer is bad. And he gave me a challenge. He said if you're going to be an engineer, hire a CEO. If you want to be a CEO, hire an engineer.

Speaker 2: 2:32

That led me into a bit of an identity crisis, so saying, who am I? I don't want to just say I'm one thing or the other. I said I need to figure this out, and so I spent some time really thinking about it and came out and said yeah, I really am a CEO. I consulted with other people and got their input and said, yeah, I am a CEO, but I do have engineering background. So now I call myself the engineering CEO. I have hired engineers now and they do a phenomenal job at doing the IT engineering and what I do now as a CEO, I'm engineering what I call human networks. I'm engineering that for our clients and in our business the systems and the processes to make things more efficient, more effective, both internally and for our clients.

Speaker 1: 3:16

That's a great way of describing it. I really I know that there's a lot of books that people can get into that describe owning a business and how people have to go from that, and then I hold on to the things that I like doing. But there are highest and best used activities for a CEO, and likely managing tickets day to day stops becoming one of them pretty early on in the business, and I think those of us that are able to really take a good inventory of what we're good at and what we need to bring other people into support us with will survive. I am a great telemarketer. I started a telemarketing company. It isn't the best use for the company CEO to be on the phone for eight hours a day Now, and if I could make the money that I make as a CEO as a telemarketer, I'd probably just go back to doing that, but that isn't possible. So here we all are.

Speaker 1: 4:08

That's a great takeaway from today's episode of when. Look at what your highest and best use is and start building a business that allows you to accomplish those tasks. Another thing that James and I talked about before in the green room was that James and his partner have been married for 26 years and his partner has been involved in the business with him since day one. Obviously, we are Richardson and Richardson. We're there right now, but we're in year three of a partnership and you're in year 26. So tell me a little bit about how you and Natalie make that work.

Speaker 2: 4:45

So the reality is we've been in business together for 26 years. We commit and we got married. We committed to the business of life and running an IT consulting company was just really a natural expansion of that. We have four kids. We homeschool them, so we're doing that.

Speaker 2: 5:02

And she came as we started the business and said how can I help you? What do you need? I looked at her and said I could really use some help with bookkeeping. I don't like doing that. She said sounds good and she's very detail oriented, so she does a phenomenal job at it. You talked about best and highest use.

Speaker 2: 5:20

That's an example of I can be very detail oriented but that slows me down from doing the visionary stuff. So she's taken on. She started in bookkeeping but then took on the role more as a COO as well to take over a lot of the day-to-day details off of me so that I could focus more on the bigger picture things. We now have a service manager that's being trained up into a COO role that she's doing a lot of that training and leading on, but she was able to take and offload those more detail oriented things that I can do but have to slow down to do. That's really in her wheelhouse. It's been really neat to see her grow and flourish as well, which is exciting for me, not just in the business but just personally. But it's also been a great thing for the business and for me to grow in the business as well. I don't think I'd want to do it any other way you had mentioned that.

Speaker 1: 6:15

One of the things that Natalie Excel, that was, engaging with your team and helping them grow, which must have been an interesting growth path. From I do the books too I am now the CFO and COO of a rapidly growing IT organization.

Speaker 2: 6:33

Yes, she joked for a while and still does. Occasionally she's the team mom, but she's had to figure out what that role is and create it, craft it a little bit herself. But we always wanted to create an organization that wasn't just about this dollar or this performance metric but was really about helping people find and fulfill purpose in their life. Yes, we should do that economically and we should be profitable. Those things are all very important and we manage those numbers. But it wasn't just about the numbers. She's really been able to bring the delivery of that heart. I had the vision of it, but it was really not good at delivering on it on a day-to-day basis. I get too focused on everything else. She's been really good at bringing that heart and that delivery and helping to really build that culture of caring for people.

Speaker 1: 7:28

Must be nice to have someone to celebrate the wins with. How do you guys manage controversy within your business or within your home life spilling back into the business or into your home life?

Speaker 2: 7:41

It just happens. I'd love to say that it doesn't. I'd love to say that we can create a firewall that it just doesn't go across. We do protect that to some degree, but the other reality is that we've given up on the theory that it can ever be perfectly managed. It's going to traverse. We've done vacations where we just say, hey, this is part business and part fun. We go and have some business meeting stuff and business planning and then go have fun. It's a pretty amazing opportunity that we can go and do things and live life together and not have to be separated. When we try to force it to be separated, we found that it just created a lot of extra attention. We look and say where and when and how and should we separate these, but we also don't try to force it to always be perfectly separated.

Speaker 1: 8:41

Great advice. Is it difficult to have each other's backs in the middle of conflict, or is that just a natural default setting?

Speaker 2: 8:53

We're both very stubborn, and so I think the first thing that we're absolutely stubborn and committed to and this is just amazing for me is that we're stubborn and committed to living life together. And even when we are really upset with each other, even when we're really frustrated, we disagree about something or we're in conflict about something, we are committed to living life with each other. And we've said that at times we look at each other and go I don't like you much right now, but I'm committed to figuring this out, whatever that means. And that level of commitment, that honesty and the vulnerability of it, but also that commitment, has been extremely valuable. And, yes, sometimes things last longer and sometimes that impacts the business in a negative way. I'd like to say no, the business is always insulated or the family's always insulated. It's not true, it just it does impact it. But it's one of those things where I think that the overall benefit far outweighs any of the negative hits that we get from that kind of spillover.

Speaker 1: 9:59

We have a counselor that we see from time to time, and one of the things that she said to me a few months ago that stuck with me since was that if your partner is in crisis, your first commitment is to helping your partner through that crisis, even if you're the one that caused it. So we're not looking to win or lose. We're looking for a compromise where we can both live with the outcome. We're not trying to. I don't need to be right, he doesn't need to be wrong. We need to find a place together where we can be functional and content and move towards happy, versus me lording something over him. If I believe that I am correct, it's nice to see other people doing it successfully, and for 26 years, no less. So congratulations.

Speaker 2: 10:48

Thank you. There's a good meme about that I've seen, and it's not just about marriage but it's about other things. It's where two people are in a boat and there's a hole on one side of the boat and the one person's trying to deal with the hole and the other person's on the other side in the same boat saying I'm so glad the problem's not on my end. But when you're in a partnership where you are fully committed to living life and that business of life together, yeah, it's. If they have a problem, you have a problem, and that's and you mentioned some books.

Speaker 2: 11:21

Jocko Willett put out a book about extreme ownership, this idea that in a team environment, if there's a failure, then the entire team failed and every single member of the team. We try to embed that in our company too, where every single member is looking at and going how did I contribute to this failure? That doesn't remove accountability, but it does help people to evaluate where was, what was my part, that I played in this and how can I support this person and possibly remedy the things that I'm contributing to.

Speaker 1: 11:54

That sounds like it's a good win overall for you and your partner and your entire team. I think there's nothing worse than walking on eggshells around two people that you know are in the middle of a conflict.

Speaker 2: 12:07

Yeah, again, I'd love to say that we perfectly handle that. We don't always, but I think we've grown and learned a lot. We've done a lot of growing up together too.

Speaker 1: 12:18

I understand you're celebrating a new addition right now.

Speaker 2: 12:21

Yep, we just had our third grandchild, born on Sunday night, so it's a.

Speaker 1: 12:30

Busy house now.

Speaker 2: 12:32

Busy house, tiring, but very rewarding. And nothing like that new baby smell Absolutely amazing.

Speaker 1: 12:41

Congratulations to both of you, thank you. And to your daughter, yeah, thank you. So on, when we like to talk about where people are achieving success or where are they achieving their wins, so tell me about a recent win for your organization.

Speaker 2: 13:00

I'll say it generally, but then I'll. There's one I'm specifically thinking about but it's happened multiple times with our clients. If we believe that if all we're doing is IT, that we're really missing the boat with our clients, we really need to align IT to their business and that the objective is their business, not IT. So when we believe that to us, wins are measured in success of our clients. So where we've seen what we measure a win as, and successes when we see our clients growing, the beauty is that's a great growth plan for us as a business, because we still want to get net new clients. But our growth is not purely hunched on net new clients and controlling churn rate and all that kind of stuff, which is all important. But our growth is also tied to our clients growing, which I think is that MSP model that we want to put ourselves in the same boat, that when they succeed, we succeed. And so wins for us are measured in our client successes.

Speaker 2: 14:04

And we've had one of our non Actually two of our nonprofit clients. We started with them we're small, five, 10 people and then over five to 10 years we see them grow, and both of the two I'm thinking of, but we've got several other examples. Both of them are in excess of 100 staff now, and so that's not just staff right. Great, yes, it's more revenue for us, but it also means for the non-pro Defense contractor client. That really was.

Speaker 2: 14:35

When we came in. They had a massive retraction. They had some issues that in the organization is reset almost to zero and we were able to come in and build a solid IT platform. But that also be in their strategic planning conversations and have conversations not just about IT but about their business and operations and planning. And they at this point, have now grown up and they're 40 people strong and that's in the course of two years. So, and they are continuing on that growth trajectory and have told us that we are a critical, vital part of that. To us, that's a win. Yes, the economics need to be there. Yes, the profit loss ratio, the profit ratios and margins and all that stuff need to be there. Those are all important. But if we're doing all that and not really having a positive impact on our clients, we don't consider that a win. So the win for us is that they're driving forward and that we're seeing that IT is strategically supporting their business growth.

Speaker 1: 15:37

I don't think there's anything better than sitting in a boardroom where somebody's celebrating the money that they spent with you and how well it turned out.

Speaker 2: 15:46

Yes, the other part that's happened is especially the nonprofits. We've had a few that their executive director leaves and or transitions, which is sometimes a great opportunity because they go and then bring us in another place. But what we've consistently found is when the new executive director comes in, if I meet with them within three to six months, one of the first things they say is you need and this is very consistent. They say you need to know that you have champions here. They said what do you mean? And they said I was coming in. I'm looking at everything, evaluating what needs to change, and one thing that we've consistently been told by pretty much all of our directors is I cannot change IT. Jnr Networks is here to stay. You will not change them, and that's been very rewarding to hear that we do a good enough job all the way down through the chain that we have that support, even when a new director comes in.

Speaker 1: 16:50

Tell me a little bit about your work with DOD contractors right now. We were talking a little bit before about opportunities that you saw on the market, specifically around compliance. We talked a little bit about CMC and you said that the opportunity that you're seeing isn't focused on that specific area. So tell me about the next wave of compliance in the IT world.

Speaker 2: 17:18

This is the big buzzword in IT right now is compliance, cybersecurity and the DOD contractors, the CMMC stuff, and there's a ton of people jumping on this bandwagon, as there will be when there's money available and there's opportunity. But what we're seeing is that while people are doing it, it's one thing to write policies, it's one thing to write to build cybersecurity stuff, but if you've not taken the time to really understand a business's operations, oftentimes the compliance is just this checkbox that you have to do and you have these manuals, you put them on the shelf half the time, you don't follow everything and you end up in this constant tension, which actually leads to a less secure environment because people don't like it and they start finding ways around the IT stuff, all the security that you've put in. What we've done is we've tried to flip that and go to the business first and say what are your business objectives? And then we bring in cybersecurity, not as just something you have to do to be compliant or to meet this certain, whether it's CMMC or NIST or HIPAA or PCI or whatever but we look at it more from how do we strategically align our perspective about the way we handle this data in a way that is compliant and so the compliance is just a natural outcome and we spend more time focusing on business process and systems and attitude towards the data and the work they're doing. The end result is that the compliance is not just something that they have, that they can say, oh, I've got this checkbox. It actually really causes them and allows them to mature as an organization.

Speaker 2: 19:00

A lot of times when companies go towards compliance, they actually devolve in their maturity because they're having to manipulate to try to be compliant. We approach it from a different perspective, where we're actually using compliance as a tool to help them learn how to have better risk management conversations, not just about IT, but about risk management as a whole and how to embrace and accept appropriate risk and how to make appropriate choices about risk mitigation. Again, that's not an IT conversation. It's a business conversation that has ramifications in IT. So we do that from that perspective and then we turn that around back into the compliance stuff and we meet the compliance standards absolutely, but we're doing it from a business alignment perspective. I think there's a phenomenal opportunity there. It's a higher lift than just coming in and saying, hey, here's a policy, do it. But I think there's a phenomenal opportunity in that space, because it's not being done well and compliance really has a sour name right now. I think there's a way that we can make that a positive impact for businesses.

Speaker 1: 20:11

So if you're able to do that, what does the win look like for your business five years down the road?

Speaker 2: 20:18

So initially I think it's going to slow us down a little bit because we have to tool up and really reframe some language. But once that happens, we're really looking at exponential growth and I don't know that I could predict exactly what that number looks like. I could do it, but it'd be like a crystal ball type thing. But we're seeing a phenomenal opportunity there. Right now. We're already seeing our clients become our own champions and they're reaching out to their peers and saying, hey, you need to talk to these people, so we would see that continuing to grow. And what we've already seen parts of and we expect to see more of is our clients coming and saying, hey, if you are effective with this money, can we give you more money and continue that multiplier effect? I don't know where that's going to go in five years, but I think what I'm seeing is a really amazing trajectory for growth, by being in a place that other people are, but being different to nothing. The way we do it, that it really works for people and it resonates.

Speaker 1: 21:23

Thank you so much for spending a little bit of time with us today. It was great to learn more about you. It was great to learn more about JNR Yep.

Speaker 2: 21:32

James and Natalie Riley.

Speaker 1: 21:35

Aw, that should be easy to remember now. All right, thank you so much for joining us today, james. It was a pleasure to have you on win. I wish you much success with JNR Networks moving forward. If anybody would like to get a hold of James, you will find his contact information in the show notes today. So if you're a peer who's curious about how they manage to make that transition from engineer to CEO, or if you are a Tucson-based contractor, or if you are a Tucson-based DoD contractor or you called it a bib Did I get that?

Speaker 2: 22:13

right. Yes, the defense industrial base.

Speaker 1: 22:17

If that's your key area and you're looking for excellent IT support in the Tucson area, you can get in touch with James. Or if you are a nonprofit that's looking to better support your client base, you can give James a call by taking a look in the show notes. You'll find his contact information and links to his website there. Until next time, I hope you're all winning.