Scott Cooley WINS by building a team focused on Aloha Spirit.

Scott Cooley started his business at the age of 13.  He installed some of the first wired networks in Honolulu.  Indevtech was founded in 2010, and was recently honored by Pacific Business News as one of the fastest growing companies in Hawaii.

Indevtech has been growing aggressively, focused on adding new team members while maintaining the Aloha Spirit that they are known for. 

In this episode of WIN, Scott shares some of the pros (hard for competitors to enter the space) and the cons (limited target accounts) of running a small business on an island, and shares what they're focused on next:  building their first defined sales process and making their first dedicated sales hire.

One thing Scott credits to his accelerated success over the last few years is participation in the TruMethods TruPeer peer group.  Learn why he decided to join, and why the impact to his business was so significant.

Scott has two ten-year-old daughters, and was born and raised in Hawai'i.  Both of his parents were entrepreneurs, so Scott was surrounded with business process his whole life!

Hosted by Carrie Richardson, Partner at Richardson & Richardson Consulting, this is a great episode for anyone else focused on growing a business from the 2MM mark to the 5MM mark.  

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

Serial entrepreneurs, life partners and business partners, they have successfully exited from multiple businesses (IT, call center, real estate, marketing) and they help other business owners create their own versions of success.

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

Carrie has helped create and execute successful outbound sales strategies for over 1200 technology-focused businesses including MSPs, manufacturers, distributors and SaaS firms.

Learn more at www.foxcrowgroup.com

Book time with Carrie here!

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

My name is Carrie Richardson and I am your host of WIN.

 I am one of the partners of Richardson and Richardson Consulting. And with me today is Scott Cooley, who is the c e o and founder of In Dev Tech in Honolulu. Scott started Cyber Tech Systems when he was only 13 years old.

He was one of the first people in Hawaii to help businesses get on the in. Learn how to use email. They focused on internet cabling for offices and they installed some of the first generation wired networks in Hawaii. Both of his parents were entrepreneurs, which is really cool because nobody really taught me anything about being an entrepreneur.

So that's a nice little step up for some people. I'm looking forward to learning more about that. And he studied Japanese and university, so of course now he runs an IT company. 

Scott, how are you? 

Great. Carrie, thanks for asking me to be on today. 

Oh, I'm glad that you could join us. Tell us a little bit about what you're doing today, where you're located, what's the weather like?

Today I'm working from my home office and it's nice, 82 degrees outside. It's almost 11 o'clock. The kids are in school. I got the house to myself and just another day in Paradise. And I have to say, this is the high point of my day today, so really happy to be here with you. 

To be fair though, his day is just starting well, mine is just ending.

Yeah. So something much better could happen by the end of the day. Probably will. We'll see. So I talked to Scott A. Little bit before the show started because we always talk to our guests and learn a little bit about 'em. So what I learned about in dev tech is they started in 2001, and between 2001 and 2010, they were.
What do you would describe as a break fix IT support provider, meaning that something broke and they came out and fixed it, and between now and then they have a transition to manage it provider at the premier providers and the Honolulu area. So tell us a little bit about how you went from the break fix solutions you were offering in 2001 to being one of the.
I believe we said pricier, but we're going to use premier providers of IT support in Hawaii. 

That was not an overnight transition. The world did not know managed services very well prior to 2010, and it was all break fix. We got paid to racks, stack servers and then we gave 'em our card and they called us when things broke and we prior to 2007.
Driving and like you said trunk slamming and onsite. There was a lot of onsite. I spent a lot of time in the car listening to, we didn't have podcasts then. It was called Talk Radio on am. And it was my, days were on the road going to onsite repair calls and things like that. And we started doing remote support, I think in 2007, which changed the game entirely.
I was able to start spending more of my time in the. Doing remote support, selling, writing up quotes here and there. And then I used subcontractors to send out in the field to do onsite work and managed services was it wa it was a, really long, uphill hill battle.
It was a lot easier to get new net new clients on a manage service plan. But a lot harder. I think we finally converted our, last break fix. Block time client last year, and that was someone that had been with us for 25 years. And we finally put them on our, managed services plan.
So it's a long journey. But today we're a hundred percent managed services. Big focus on cybersecurity and starting this year to do also compliance as a service for the businesses that require that. 

So based on our conversation before the the show started recording, I understand you bootstrapped your business from zero to where you are today.
You've never taken on any external investment and you've never been in any debt. Sounds like an exciting way to run a business, but there's something pretty exciting happening in your business right now. So the current business challenge that Scott and his team are working on, are adding to their team and their team has already grown three times the size that it was two years ago in the last year.
So tell us a little bit about how you're handling that growth spurt. 

I'll back up and tell you my, biggest fear in growing the company, it all was, losing our identity. Our identity was. Basically me it was my responsiveness, competency my affect with, the clients. And so I've always been real conservative about who I allow to represent the company.
In terms of the technicians and subcontractors that we send out. And so that's been a real key component in deciding how to grow, what kind of people are gonna fit the culture. Because the last thing I want is to to, grow it. And have, people say where's, Scott Cooley?
It's, I think you described it as moving from like a lifestyle business to a business that has a, life of its own getting the business to, to thrive without me. And that is, Something that appeals to me. But it's also scary because for so many years I, I was the business I was the face of the business and and there's that part of me that, that thinks can I teach this to someone else?
Or are they paying for. Are they paying for me? Are they paying for the service? And and, there's some of each and then there's taking that what made in dev tech and translating that into core values that we can some of it is you, spotted in people in applicants and you can tell they're we can tell they're gonna be a fit and some of it.
Teaching how this is how we do things. These are the kinds of words we use when we're responding to tickets. This is the, type of affect that we want to present. So it's that's been a challenge as like distilling that identity into something that we can, replicate across a diverse team and everyone's got their own personalities coming into it.
Responsiveness, competence the customer service, all of that. 

You're making a pretty important hire this year though, for the first time ever. Tell us a little bit about that. Carrie is talking about our first ever hiring the sales department. And this will be a business development specialist.
And we've never had a sales engine before in all these years because much to the. To the disappointment of mentors I've had who've said, you need to be have a sales engine be cold calling and bringing in net new r We've never done that. We've we've had very good success with warm leads, referrals all, of these years.
This city that we live in is a, tight-knit bunch of people who know people and, referrals. And we've never had the traditional sales engine of, getting cold or, lukewarm leads and trying to warm them up. And so for us, this is a big leap. We're designing a whole business development strategy and, team and a team of one to begin with.
We found a, unique. Person to fill that role. And it'll basically be expanding out and getting brand, awareness, getting out in front of prospects we normally wouldn't get a chance to, be in front of. And.  And, all kinds of other creative ways to do that through whether it's outbound marketing or podcasts or I've been doing a lot of lunch and learn type of things lately where they asked me to speak as a, as an expert on cyber in, law firms type things.
And so all of that is, is directing towards building this. Cold to warming up leads type of sales engine, and that's really exciting for us. Now, up until now, were you the primary driver of finding and closing deals? I am, and in fact I see myself as probably continuing in the outside sales role.
For the most part in our industry or the model that we've followed, it's inside sales, outside sales. And the insight sales kind of li lines up the appointments and usually the, owner this is an owner led sales business. The owner will go out on the sales calls.
And, close the business. Our sales cycle is extremely long here. It can be months. It can. A year or two or more. And that's just because we're not the first thing we, say is we're not here to sell you anything. We're just here to see if it's a fit. Maybe you leave today with a better understanding of technology and how other businesses are using technology.
Maybe we work together, maybe we don't. But those conversations over the years have led to. Sometimes years long relationships where we end up working together at, the culmination of it, and sometimes we don't. And it's just, it's good to stay in touch with people. It's a very long process.
It's not for I'll, just tell you a very quick vignette. We had a inside sales guy for.  about nine months, and he was a copier salesperson from San Francisco. And he just went crazy trying to do managed service sales because of how long it takes and how much there is how, many moving pieces there is, even just to to get a quote together, and And we told him for every lead that you disqualify that's, just as important as getting us an appointment because that's saving us. That's saving us a customer that's potentially not a fit, but he didn't see it that way and he moved back to San Francisco, and a lot of my clients don't see it that way either.

Copiers are like the ultimate displacement sale as well, right? Like you either need a copier or you don't, and there isn't much that you could say to somebody that would convince them to replace a copier that was working perfectly. Yeah. So if you're like a, if you're a phone grinder and those copier guys are trained by some of the best people in the world, Xerox is training is second to none.
You can write your own ticket if you can spend five years with Xerox. So you know, if you can't make it there. Yeah, the odds are you're you're going along the right way, and I personally believe that you have a real advantage peer to peer talking, business owner to business owner about the unique challenges of running a business.
And you guys have some more unique challenges, right? It's not and, we mentioned this earlier, that. , if the competition can't just walk across the street and muscles in, they're gonna have to take a plane or they're gonna have to take a boat. There are some very real restrictions to just setting up shop in a place like Hawaii.
So you can use that to your advantage, but I imagine there's gotta be times where it's also a, bit of a struggle.

Hawaii is a great place to do business. It's, self-contained. It's surrounded by water. We don't have people setting up shop across state lines and, trying to come in and, take our clients.
And it's, these relationships are really built on trust. So our clients, our client, they are clients for life. We, it's built on long-term relationships, and that's what I like about this place. I'm I'm, I was born and raised here in Hawaii, and I think everyone thinks that their market is different.
I truly believe this, our market is different because we're all isolated on this island together. And people know each other. You really can't burn your bridges here because that same person that we, you're gonna run into them at the store at Costco, you're gonna run into them at the next company you work for.
They might be the cfo and It and, everyone knows that. And so people here are very diplomatic and very we have this thing called the aloha spirit, and people are, kind and considerate. And personally I don't think I, I could hack it in a place like LA where it's, just dog eat dog because this, suits me.
I'm, open, I'm vulnerable. I like to build relationships. I don't do the hard sell. And for me this, is a, good environment to do business. There's an upper limit, of course, there's only so many businesses in our target addressable market. A lot of people go to Silicon Valley because they wanna make it big, but for us, I have a small family. I've got I got 10 year old girls actually. And to, raise a family and have a small business. This is a nice place to. . 

I have a 10 year old who will be turning 11 on February. She doesn't have a birthday this year. She's a 29th. That's right.
So the second thing we talked about was a recent achievement or milestone that you'd like to share with us. And I think this kind of feeds back into the conversation that we were just having. There's a lot of the things that we talked about being a, principal at sales organization and the things that you learned about your business and about.
Now how to build that process for your new business development rep Came with some support from some like-minded friends. So you mentioned that you joined a peer group this year and that it made an incredible impact on your business. So tell us a little bit about that. How did you hear about it? Why did you choose that particular peer group and what, are you getting from it?

Yeah, that's, it's been a huge part of my journey over the past year. We've been a member of True Methods by Gary Pica since, almost since he started, which was about 11 years ago. And True methods used to just be a self-study framework where you would study the video content applied in your business.

And they had once a year meeting. And a few years ago, right before Covid Gary started a peer.  called True Pierre. And what they would do is, and I, avoided it. I didn't want to do it. And the primary reason was it required you to fly to Philadelphia four times a year, , and that is 17 hours of travel and it.
Is not comfortable. I and I also just, I wasn't ready. I'll, just, the truth was I just wasn't ready in, the beginning. They were talking about accountability. I didn't want to be accountable. They were talking about sales. I didn't want to do sales. We were comfortable at this certain revenue mark where the, margins were great and the hours were great, and I.
wasn't ready to, put in the work to get to the next level. And through a confluence of events. This past year, coming out of the pandemic hiring a, VP who really started to kick my, butt in the right direction I, I revisited joining the, peer group and. I was I, it's just blown my mind.
It's one of those things that you go, oh, I should have done it sooner. But then I realize I wouldn't have been ready if I'd done it sooner. It came at just the right time and it is just motivating and invigorating to be surrounded by like-minded folks who are just trying to do the same thing.
And, the thing about True Methods in particular is these are folks that are on a daily basis trying to get better. We're just trying to be better business people, be better leaders, be better communicators be better with our, clients, be better with our families. It's, a program.
Of improvement and and little baby steps at a time. But having that, if you wanna call that an accountability partner or support network is just so vital when you're engaged in that because it's it's, lonely at the top. Like, they say it's, lonely at the top.
And to have that support really makes a difference. And so we meet It's actually now three times a year and it's different places in the us So our last meeting was in Phoenix, so that was only six and a half hours away.  from, and a little warmer too. Yeah. And I'm, getting used to the Philadelphia travel now.
It's not, as bad. But it's great even in this world when we can do so much over, over Zoom. Nothing compares to getting together in the same space physically and putting our phones on silent and focusing on the business for it, it's like a three or four day event where all we're doing is working on the business.
And I'm, gratified to be able to say that we're at the point that I can actually go to Philadelphia and the staff here can, work in the business while I work on the business. And that was not the case for, the longest time. 

I understand. Something pretty exciting happened for you guys this year.
You won an award. Tell us about the Pacific Business News, which is our local business journal put out a list of fastest growing companies. And it was evaluating revenue between 2019 and 2021, which was a particularly difficult time for a lot of. Businesses during and right after the pandemic, but we managed to make the list.
And, I have to tell you, that was the first time I've ever. Submitted to a a list like that. I was always very private with the company to find anything that would ask to divulge financials or anything like that. And I I de, I debated whether I should even apply for it. And I asked some, peers and some colleagues and.
And the answer I got was success begets success. If you, if just by, by putting yourself out there whatever ranking you come in, and I think we were like 36 out of 47  we're at the bottom of the list. But just by, by being out there it, lends some credibility to, to the business.
And that it I'll, tell you what, Carrie, I wasn't even on LinkedIn until.  a year ago I was like fly below the radar kind of guy, and I just realized that in this day they're have to play, the game. And so I started putting, myself out there some more.
So I signed up for this survey and they came back and they said, you made the list. And and that was a, big deal for us and I think we were 33% growth compared to those, two years. And that was a time that some industries did, really well. And unfortunately lot of other types of companies went out of business during that time.

And we made it through and yeah, the testament to resilience. And the time when so many businesses were forced to reevaluate things or pivot or lay off their team members, you were actually growing your team, which is super exciting. And I know that the the third thing that we were gonna talk about, the opportunity that you were planning to pursue next, I already asked you about, which was the acquisition of your new sales hire.
We got to talk about so many. Before we came on air today one of the things that I thought was interesting was that most people will build a job and hire someone to fill that job. You met a person. Who you really liked and who you felt would be culturally an excellent fit in your organization and changed the job role a little bit.
So tell us about how that came about. You were looking for a very specific thing and then you met a very specific person and now you feel like you've got this like really interesting synergy with them where they're gonna have more responsibility and probably be able to accomplish a lot more. Talk to me about how you made that.

Yeah. And I think I might get some flack from certain business consultants about this methodology. But in our small office we, all wear multiple hats and I did the the EMyth. Org chart where they tell you to draw an org chart and even if you put your name in every single box, you do an org chart so that you know what the roles are that need to be filled.
And and so we, wear multiple hats and we're looking for talent that can hopefully meet. More than one criteria. And we've done it a couple times now where we've had an idea of we're, huge into cyber security this year. We had to hire a full-time person to manage our security stack.
And once we interviewed a couple people, we found someone who not only had that technical ability, but it turned out would be able to fit some other roles that we needed. And so that's a plus on, on his, eligibility for that. And that's not to say that we, couldn't do it.
It's just a nice bonus. And when we met we're casting the net for inside sales and that was I think a term that maybe some people weren't familiar with. And we got some responses. And these were Xerox type sales salespeople. And we found someone. Actually her background was not in inside sales.
But in interviewing her, we just found personality wise that we felt that she could do a really good job in more of a holistic. Business development program. And here we are basically we're building the, business development program from scratch. And she's had experience doing that in other industries.
And we said let's just back up a step and saying we're not gonna pretend that we have this all figured out and just give you a playbook. We wanna bring you on and have you help us develop this program. And if that includes, if that's cold calling, if that's direct mail, if that's LinkedIn networking events, whatever it is you're gonna be integral in, in def defining and developing that, process.
So it's a combination of inside, outside sales. Networking and it is, it's just really exciting to see what what can happen when you let yourself think outside the box. Because in true methods, I will tell you it's a very strict framework and it works really well if you have dedicated people for the roles.
But when you're small and you're all wearing multiple hats, then it can be It's just not, we can't afford to have a dedicated person in each role. So if you can think outside the box and look at this and say this, could actually be more than what we thought we wanted. And, it's always such a it feels so good when you go, when you discover something like, I didn't even know that this is what I wanted.
And that's, been a big part of our growth is just being open-minded to those opportunities instead of just saying, we've got this job description. This is what it is, these are the hours. And and that's worked so far. I understand as we grow, maybe we need. Formalize it a little more, but for now it's, been a great way to build a really fun, dynamic team of, people that really want to be here and are passionate about what we do.

Really exciting to hear somebody who's been in business as long as you have still describing their business as fun. , I don't hear that a lot. So congratulations on building a culture that not only is your team thriving in, but that you're still enjoying from day to day as well. That's that's not a simple feat, so I'm really glad you could join us today.
I you are our first guest from Hawaii thank you. I think it's, it is Aloha, aloha, Aloha. We talked about aloha spirit. Which I really loved. I think that's a, wonderful core value. And you mentioned that you had some core values that you lived by there. We're almost out of time, so I don't get to grill you on what they are, but believe me, I will be asking you once we stop recording today.
Scott Cooley from Indevtech, thank you for sharing how you're winning. And I will be certain to follow up with you in 90 days and about 180 days to see how that new hire worked out for you and whether or not your theory is correct. So have a great day and for everyone else that took some time out of their day today to listen.