Meet Robert Hood

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Robert Hood. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Robert below.

Robert, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?
I grew up with my dad self-employed and working out of the house. He supported our family and made a career out of buying non-working TV’s, fixing them, and reselling them. Of course, that was back in the day when you had tubes and components that could be replaced to fix a TV. What I remember most, was that he would sometimes work late, or up early, or on the weekend, whatever was needed to get the job done. But the second part of that was that he would never-ever do a minimalistic job. He would never be satisfied with even a hint of less than the correct fix for a problem. He would put in whatever time was needed to find the root problem and fix it. He knew it would be unethical to sell a TV that might have an issue in the weeks after he sold it because of work he had done.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I started my business out of my garage over 20 years ago. But even before that I had spent about over a decade doing software engineering and IT. The one thing I didn’t like about IT, is how much I saw people taking advantage of others by handwaving and using their knowledge to be less than genuine. So I started my business with the goal of always being honest, forthright, and charging fairly. And I’m happy to say, after 20 years in the business, I’ve never ever taken advantage of anyone’s lack of knowledge, or done anything unethical (and ethics is a big part of our business; with every interaction we ask “is it fair and reasonable?”).

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
1. My undergraduate education was in physics. Understanding how things work down the to the atomic level has really helped my understand how things work in electronics, IT and software engineering. Whatever you end up doing, understand it at it’s core, otherwise you’ll end up faking it at times.

2. In graduate school I earned an MBA. That was essential in allowing me to understand business principles that allowed me to scale and integrate the various business functions (operations, finance, marketing, sales, technical, etc.). But when you’re starting a small business, and even as you’re gowning it, the most important decisions you have to make are ones you can’t get training in – Do you hire or don’t hire Joe? What office do you give Sally? Do you give a staff person that extra month off when they ask? Which office do you rent? And so on and so on. You’re going to have to go to your peers to help form your attitudes and make your decisions. Make it a deliberate choice to learn from those around you and be flexible in your approach.

3. It’s great to be a technical expert, but that will only get you so far. As your business grows, being a good leader is going to be much more important. Be sociable, listen to your staff, remember their birthdays, learn what’s important to them. Being a leader to your people, and having them want to follow you, will allow you to go to the next level.

Tell us what your ideal client would be like?
Our ideal clients are those that share our values: Doing the job right and being honest and upfront with others. Regardless of the client’s size, budget or business, these are always the relationships that we have found most rewarding for me and my staff (and by rewarding I’m talking about something much more fundamental than just money).

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