My Entrepreneurship Journey

I'm a native North Carolinian.  Entrepreneurship is ingrained in who I am.  The earliest business I can remember was selling lemonade.  Now, I know what you're thinking... this wasn't just any old lemonade stand.  You see, the city was running sewer lines in my neighborhood that summer, and, as any boy would, I loved to watch the big construction machines.  I quickly realized that I had a captive target market of construction workers.  With my mom's help (I was 6 years old), I set up a lemonade stand to help these thirsty guys and make some quick cash.  It only lasted a week or two, but I still remember the close to $50 made!  I was hooked!

We moved out to the country when I was 10 and had some land with a big garden.  I worked hard to plant, water, and grow some pumpkins, gourds, and Indian corn.  Later, I marketed this to family, friends, and folks at church to sell the crop and make $150 profit year after year.

In high school, I was part of a club that was doing a fund raiser by selling candy.  Once I burnt through my stash of 24 individual packs of Skittles, I realized that I could restock from our local big box club and continue selling, but at half the price of the club fund raiser.  I expanded my offering beyond just Skittles (my favorite), to carry over 30 different types of candy.  As a 15-year-old, it was exciting to track my sales, forecast inventory in Excel, and make some decent bank.  I was averaging $200 per month in profit from selling candy, I could hardly believe it! 

I attended UNC Charlotte to study business.  I loved learning more about business concepts, how micro economics explained the world, and strategies for efficiently and effectively managing people.  I took as many classes as possible each semester and created a plan from the beginning to graduate in just 3.5 years.  I succeeded in that plan and graduated with two majors: one in Business Administration with a concentration in Entrepreneurship and the second in International Business with a concentration in Spanish.

Throughout high school and college, I worked for an Audio/Visual Integrator doing everything from cleaning the toilet and answering the phone, to filling in for everyone throughout the summer as they took vacations, to running my own install teams.  The business I worked for all those years went through several major transitions during my time there and changed ownership.

When I graduated in December, the general manager and top NC sales person of the A/V company was venturing out on his own to start an Audio/Visual Integration company.  I, of course, started day one! In my heart of hearts, I wanted to lead and manage my own company, but at age 22, this was great experience.  I watched and learned many practical things about business and growth.  I saw many examples of what to do and what not to do.  I worked my way from installations to sales and sales management within this organization.

After about 5 years, the owner of the business was looking for a change.  The company I had worked so hard in to grow and build for 5 years was for sale! Knowing I had the entrepreneurship bug, the owner approached me about buying the business which led me to where I am today!  I started EMC3 Enterprises to acquire that business.  I put it all on the line, pulled all the cash out of the house, 401k, savings, and even the loose change in the car (not kidding) to buy my first company.

Over the last 5 years of owning and organically growing a company of my own, there have been many lessons learned (way better than a MBA program).  While there's been ups and downs, my team has been wildly successful.  I'm now looking to do it again!

I married my high school sweet heart just a few days after graduating college.  She is a math major and taught high school math until we started a family.  I have four boys 8 years old and younger with our newest addition just last summer!  My faith in 

God and providing for my family drive me to succeed at my endeavors.

My crazy crew means the world to me!  It's my desire to build a legacy for my family and a place that can engage my boys as they get older and possibly pass the torch to them at the appropriate time if they desire.