Entrepreneurial Profile: Bryan Boam

by Brian Acord

As founder of NCSI, Mr. Boam’s success on the entrepreneurial stage sheds light on a longstanding and fundamental question regarding the nature of startups and those who start them. “Are entrepreneurs born or are they created?”

Bryan Boam is the founder and President of Network Consulting Services Inc. (NCSI), a technology services company specializing in end-to-end security for medium to large businesses along the Wasatch Front. His firm provides a variety of products and services designed to protect networks from external hackers, viruses, and overall system abuse. Currently employing five full-time employees, NCSI has just recently reached the critical breakeven point of operational profitability after being in business only 15 months.

Bryan Boam has been starting business ventures all his life. He began his first business venture at the early age of nine years old. Unlike many neighborhood lemonade stands and Saturday odd-job ventures, Mr. Boam built a summer-long business of raising and selling earthworms. He remembers marketing the business, paying employees (Mom made sales while he was away and his little brother caught the slimy inventory). He invested capital to build a worm farm out of peat moss and kept financial records on a business that was soon churning out fifty dollars a week in net profits.

As he grew older his eye for business opportunities developed a variety of new ventures.  In addition to scrounging errant golf balls and selling them back to local duffers, Bryan also took advantage of pricing inconsistencies in the International spice market. At the age of 12 he spent his savings on acquiring pure vanilla extract while on a family vacation in Mexico. Bringing his inventory across International borders he then repackaged the spice to sell to local housewives at a 300% markup thus tripling his investment in a little over a month.

(CALLOUT: It is a common characteristic of many entrepreneurs to be able to trace their early inclinations back well into their teenage years and often much earlier.)

When asked when he first started considering working for himself he quickly replies with the date (and time) of his birth. While he has worked for various established companies throughout his career, he states “I have viewed every job I have ever had as a stepping stone to owning my own business.”

Mr. Boam estimates that he made $10,000 - $15,000 in various startup opportunities before graduating from High School. It wasn’t until his early twenties when he began his move towards career entrepreneurism as he leveraged his demonstrated knack for computers and related IT experience to provide consulting for smaller companies in his spare time. What began somewhat as a hobby soon grew into a client base that was beyond his capacity to service them in his spare time. He then took a new full-time position that allowed him to continue providing technical solutions while also gaining first-hand knowledge on how to run a network consulting business.

As is quite common for ambitious entrepreneus, Mr. Boam’s sense of direction eventually grew apart from that of his employer. Rather than accepting the status quo (a very difficult thing for entrepreneurs to do) he opted to leave his current clients and his current employer and build a company around his own personal vision. Trying to reduce the risk of starting a new company all by himself, Mr. Boam tried several times to entice a fellow consultant to join him. However, while Mr. Boam had no children, his would-be partner had five kids, a mortgage, and considerably more risk. During one of their many discussions, Bryan hit a nerve by pointing out “If we were to walk out the door right now and cut all the current ties, how hard would it be to re-tie all these relationships? After all, are these customers here because of us or because of the name of the company?” After considering Bryan’s proposal for several more months, his partner realized that every single customer he had was doing business with him as an individual and not with the company. Within a few months, the two partners secured financing through a third-party financier and Network Engineers Incorporated (NEI) opened its doors in the latter end of 1995.

After five years of building workable flooring arrangements with financing companies and releasing many of the personal guarantees, mortgages, and personal credit cards that helped fund the startup, NEI found itself at a significant crossroads. The company had grown to a perfect size to allow optimal efficiencies in staffing and operations and the ownership team needed to decide whether they would be satisfied running the company at its current size for the foreseeable future or whether they needed to double their efforts and attempt to duplicate their enterprise in neighboring markets of Denver, Phoenix, and Boise. Mr. Boam was willing to take an aggressive strategy and grow the company from its current position. However, growing the company would once again require them to leverage their personal credit lines and mortgages. An idea that was not easily embraced by either partner. The partners had several discussions of how the growth could be managed and the risks minimized. It seemed that every time his partner proposed a problem, Bryan would propose a solution only to be met to another problem. After several of these conversations Mr. Boam came to the realization that “my partner wasn’t tired of running the company…he was tired of me.”

Fortunately, their company was the exact size and focus for a local gas company who was trying to break into the networking services market. After months of organizing and negotiating NEI was sold to Questar in June of 2000. Both founders were required to stay on with the new owners for a fixed period of time until the dust had settled, but soon thereafter, Mr. Boam had developed another new idea that did not fit exactly with current management and after the expiration of a non-compete clause, NCSI was founded.

Looking back on his previous ventures, Mr. Boam seriously considered his current role as founder in yet another determined startup. While his ability to leverage resources, manage finances, and provide excellent customer service helps him gain initial clients and grow to the point where he needs to bring on outside help to keep the company growing, Mr. Boam has spent considerable energies trying to decide what role best suits him and where he would like to spend the majority of his time. He does not have delusions of grandeur, visualizing himself on the top rung of a mega-sized corporate ladder. In fact, once the companies operations begin to stabilize Mr. Boam would rather step away from the day-to-day managerial decisions and return to a more technical/customer service role.  In his own words “I’m not a good CEO…I’m an engineer.” But from his steady stream of successful startups it is clear that Mr. Boam is also a nurturing entrepreneur with a keen sense of providing much needed technical solutions in a profitable manner.

 

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