Your IT, Cyber & Finance Projects, Completed – Jason Skidmore of Vernovis

Jason Skidmore, CEO of Vernovis

Jason Skidmore, the CEO of Vernovis, grew his company’s revenue from $3.8 million in 2014 to $6.5 million in 2017, a 74% increase, and to around $5.5 million in 2018.  

Vernovis provides technology, cybersecurity, accounting and finance consulting services.   

In this interview with Eversprint‘s Malcolm Lui, Jason shares how he and his team accelerated their high value sales by:  

  • Having the right people in the seats, industry veterans who can deliver on a project and help with recruitment.  
  • Culture, tools and processes that extends both internally within the company, and externally with clients.  
  • Planning on a quarterly basis to define their primary objectives, and the strategy and actions that support them.  

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Malcolm Lui:
Welcome to the High Value Sales Show of Eversprint.com. I'm Malcolm Lui, the Managing Member of Eversprint, and today we're speaking with Jason Skidmore, the CEO of Vernovis, a provider of Technology, Cybersecurity, Accounting and Finance consulting services. Welcome to the show Jason.

Jason Skidmore:
Hi, Malcolm, thanks for having me.

Malcolm Lui:
Jason, you grew your company's revenue from $3.8 million in 2014 to $6.5 million in 2017, a 74% increase, and in 2018 you hit around $5.5 million. Before we talk about how you grew your company so fast, can you briefly share what your company does beyond my quick intro, and how your company differs from the competition?

Jason Skidmore:
Sure, absolutely was you, as you stated, Malcolm, were in the I.T. accounting and cyber security services firm. And basically we deliver to our clients in three pretty specific ways. We can give them a staff to augment their existing teams, whether that would be for a special project that they're doing, or maybe they just need to bring some expertise in-house that they don't have there. So it's basically a very standard contractor model. We can also actually run the project and provide the deliverable so we can bring in our team of subject matter experts and run the project for them. Everything from scoping and planning to delivery and execution. And then the third way is what I would call advisory services. Sometimes they don't necessarily need us to come in and perform the work, but it's an initiative or something they haven't tackled before. So they like to draw on our expertise in that area and the work we've done in the past to provide the planning and maybe a roadmap on how their team can execute it. So that advisory piece is a big component. I think what differs us from a lot of our competitors in the space is the flexibility of that model. If you think about a lot of the buyers and the companies that we work with, they're very familiar with the traditional staffing model or they're very familiar with a traditional consulting model. And what we do is we really pull those together. So at the end of the day, for any of our clients, they're typically experiencing growth or they're transforming in some way. We're going for some sort of transformation initiative. The flexibility of our model to be able to flex between when they just simply need staffed versus when they need the project and delivered by us or the planning and advisory work allows them to sort of utilize us in a way that is most flexible and aligns best with where they are organizationally and who they have on their teams.

Malcolm Lui:
All right.

Jason Skidmore:
For

Malcolm Lui:
And

Jason Skidmore:
Us as an organization.

Malcolm Lui:
All right, got it. And who would? Who are your ideal clients? Like who? Who? Who do you serve best?

Jason Skidmore:
You know, I would say our best serve clients what we would call middle market companies we work with. Anything from small businesses to large multi-billion dollar enterprises. But our sweet spot tends to be what we want is traditionally referred to as the middle market. Maybe companies between 50 million in annual revenue and all the way up to a billion. But those are the organizations that we tend to align most appropriately with because they're typically going through some growth transformation, some sort of change in their business where they've figured something out. And now they need the expertise and the talent to really help them take that business to the next level and deliver on the strategic plan that they have. So those are our best clients and where we tend to see the majority of our work comes from.

Malcolm Lui:
All right. Now, you had a little bit of a drop in 2018 from some point from six point five million in 2017 to five point five million in 2018. How are you looking for 2019?

Jason Skidmore:
So two thousand nineteen. We're right back on the growth track. We're set to experience what we're anticipating to be about 40 percent growth on a year over year basis from 2018, 2019. And as you alluded to, when we were growing so quickly, we really kind of hit that plateau phase and even contracted a little bit. Right as a fast growing business. First time we've been through that running a business. It was really easy to get over our skis. And so once we sort of figured out what was going on there and. And put a great plan in place. We've got some great people that are really delivering this year. And, you know, our expectation is that growth will continue in the years ahead.

Malcolm Lui:
Right. What what what were the drivers behind that decline? In 2018?

Jason Skidmore:
Yeah, I think the drivers there were a few. I mean, there were a couple of large clients that, you know, no longer needed our services. It wasn't it wasn't that they went away or with anyone else. We just we had some really large projects that we completed with them and they were driving a significant portion of that revenue. I think the other piece was when we grew so quickly, you know, we added we added staff and we added teams very, very rapidly. And as we sort of stopped and took a look back, what we realized is we didn't necessarily have all those people properly align and in the roles that suited them best. There were others where we just needed to spend a little more time on training and development. And then along the way, the more people you have on our team, we suddenly start pursuing many, many different types of business that were peripheral to our core services, but begin against outside of it a little bit. So getting everybody refocused and aligned and heading down the right path is really what's helped us bring things back this year.

Malcolm Lui:
All right. So from 2014, you're at three point eight million in 2019. You're looking for about a 40 percent growth. That's roughly seven and a half million. What would you say are the drivers behind that growth over the past four or five years? The three

Jason Skidmore:
Yeah,

Malcolm Lui:
Driver.

Jason Skidmore:
For sure. Yeah, for sure. So I think I think the first and foremost is as people having the right people and having them in the right seats. We we've been able to hire some really strong performers, industry veterans, people that bring a certain level of expertise to our team to help us deliver on these projects, to help us from a business development and even a recruiting standpoint, which is really critical to our business. So having strong performers who are self driven, there's a lot of self accountability to that. That would be one thing. Number two, sounds a little cliche, but in our case, it's absolutely appropriate. It's culture, the culture that we're building in that our teams lean into Israel and Portland and we've been able to equip our people with tools, processes and learnings internally. Which would then reflect externally to our clients. So let's take something like collaboration. We're very intentional about taking time and having trainings and having meetings to focus on how we can better collaborate internally with the lessons that our teams learn from being able to work together in a highly competitive industry reflects when they go to our clients. Because those collaboration skills don't just stay inside, they go external.

Jason Skidmore:
And so our clients see that difference. They feel that difference. So that culture that we've built internally reflects externally and really helps us deliver. And then I would say the third thing that we've really kind of hooked on to in the last year is we take a very deliberate approach to our planning. And instead of putting together a one year plan and then evaluating how we did against that a year later, we've said we've really adopted a quarterly planning mentality and it seems daunting at first, but we've put together a system that allows us to define our primary objective or objectives and the strategies and actions that support those every single quarter. And the result is we're able to react much faster to business and market condition changes. Our team is highly focused on those plans. They know exactly what they need to do to deliver and how they build into the greater vision and where we're going as a whole. So it's really been it's really great to do this. Quarterly planning initiatives to get our teams aligned, get very specific KPI is in place around them and our teams deliver really well by doing that.

Malcolm Lui:
All right. Now is your career planning initiatives that fall into the culture, tools and processes driver? Well, you can say that's totally separate. Driver.

Jason Skidmore:
Yeah, I mean, they definitely all feed together, Ray. But I do consider that something a little bit different. You know, it certainly feeds into our culture. It certainly reiterates that spirit of collaboration because the teams are involved in that planning process. That's not just owner, ship or management handing it down to them. They're heavily involved. They have input in it. We want to know what they're seeing at a field level and how we can improve or where opportunities are. So that is its own process, but it certainly feeds into that culture component. In that culture component is really based on, you know, putting them through leadership programs, putting them through personal and professional development programs that help them interact better with one another, that help them understand what their personal goals and objectives are and how those tied into the goals and objectives in the business. So they don't just feel like they're they're serving turnovers. They're serving themselves in burnout. This is a part of that plan to get them there.

Malcolm Lui:
Right. Now, in terms of the projects that you work on, is there a typical project that you guys do or is it pretty wide ranging?

Jason Skidmore:
There are certainly typical projects. Yeah, I mean, if I look at on the I.T. side in particular right now, we tend to be highly involved in a lot of cloud initiatives, highly involved in a lot of migration work. Office 365 is a big space right now. Virtualization projects, cyber security projects are another really, really big place for us. You know, the accounting finance side, that's a little more driven by regulatory and compliance type activities and a lot of cases. So there are definitely repeatable projects. And we've built our subject matter experts and our project teams around what we know some of those hotter areas are. But as happens, particularly in the 18 cybersecurity field, the focus of those teams we're re-evaluating every year, do we have the right people focused on the right things with the right skill sets? Because technology evolves so rapidly, it's really important that we we keep on top of that. So we typically try to pick five or six areas a year that those projects would focus on. And we really drive our business development effort toward those initiatives.

Malcolm Lui:
Right. And I'm glad you mentioned business development. That's my next question for you. How did you drive the 40 percent growth in particular for 2019? How do you find a new business to to to use your growth so dramatically?

Jason Skidmore:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, we found that there were really two key components of it. And again, I think any business leader would say these executing remember something completely different. But our first approach was what we call client retention. We wanted to make sure that year over year the same businesses were coming back and working with us again, assuming they had work that we could do. So it was very important for us as we drove existing efforts with our client companies. We were learning about what was on their radar. Next year, the next quarter or the next year. And so we can begin to refine ourselves internally and have the talent available to be able to deliver on those roles or those initiatives as well. So that client retention piece was a big, big part of it. Because when you're in a project, Bay is business, a service business. Revenue comes and goes. Projects start projects. And so our ability to retain clients and maintain a certain level of revenue then augments and helps our ability on that new account development that we do. And on the new account development side, we we begin to get really deliberate and specific about understanding what industries do we do, the majority of our work in what industries have some of the best opportunity for what we do. And really having a very highly focused business development team on those two things. Number one, let's retain our existing clients and providing great service. Number two, let's take the stories and the case studies that we do in these businesses and in these industries. And let's take them to other firms in the same industry that are similar that are in our market space and let's develop new business from them. So those were really two primary drivers was making sure that our new business development effort was married to our client retention effort.

Malcolm Lui:
All right, it makes sense. Now, how does our business develop a team? Find new business. How are they making? How are they building their lives? How are they making their initial contact? How are they developing a relationship?

Jason Skidmore:
Yes, there's certainly a number of ways that they do that. You know, first and foremost is good old fashioned, you know, sells one to one, right? It's about sitting down together, establishing a list of targets that we wanna go after in a very deliberate about finding, researching and finding people that are target contacts within those companies and doing outreach to them. Phone calls and emails, you know, sells one to one. Good old fashioned stuff. Another part of it know part of our overall business development strategy has been very event driven. We also find that, you know, by giving back to the communities we serve in terms of thought, leadership content, being a part of putting on events and being in a room with them. We get an opportunity to really kind of experience and influence with them or have them influence us in different ways. So we really used events and a lot of other platforms similar to that to get the name and awareness out there. And then, of course, weeds. We have several different ways. We generate leads and information from people we meet with, people we work with, referrals that we receive from our existing clients. And those can be a really strong springboard into knowing where our next best targets lie.

Malcolm Lui:
Right. What sort of events are you talking about? Talking about conferences, talking about lunches. No. That's the structure of

Jason Skidmore:
Yeah.

Malcolm Lui:
The events.

Jason Skidmore:
Yeah. I mean, we've we have definitely taken advantage of, participated in and even chaired some I.T. conferences locally. So that's been part of it. We actually put on a lot of our own events. If you think about it, the people that we have that deliver for a lot of these projects, their subject matter experts in their space. I mean, I've got I've got chief cybersecurity officers on our team who go out and create, build and maintain cyber security programs for our clients. So being able to put on an event where one of our security guys is talking about what they do in that space, where are the risks, what's coming up next? And just educating and warming our client or prospect base about what's going on out there. We have people that see it and they work in it every day. And we're often working with technology leaders or county leaders or cybersecurity leaders. They're in it every day, but they don't have the opportunity to see it and experience it across multiple organizations with so many different things come into play. So we can bring that level of leadership and thought expertise to them as well. So it's a combination of conferences. It's doing our own events. And quite frankly, some this just, you know, social events,

Malcolm Lui:
Right.

Jason Skidmore:
Client appreciation events, things like that.

Malcolm Lui:
How big are the events that you're talking about? You're talking about small groups, large groups, enormous auditoriums.

Jason Skidmore:
Yeah, I mean, the conferences that we're part of, we're talking one to two thousand attendees type conferences, the events that we put on, we're typically looking at getting 30 to 50 key decision makers together in a room so that we're informing and we're educating. But it also takes on a little bit of a roundtable type feel to it where there can be some interaction and discussion among those groups. So we've participated in both all sizes, but that's certain. We find that a lot of the things that we do are driven toward. It's less about packing a room with massive amounts of people and it's more about providing contact to a small group of people who can really take it, benefit from it and get some value from it.

Malcolm Lui:
Right. So for the events that you put on, is it just local to where you are in Ohio or are you do you have a counter and you're going on the road to the various cities throughout the United States?

Jason Skidmore:
No, up to this point, we've focused mostly on local markets. You know, for us right now, we're in. We're in the Ohio region, primarily central and southwest Ohio. So Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton. Right. Or some of the cities that we serve directly. And so we've been mostly focused on doing events in those areas.

Malcolm Lui:
Ok, so why not take it on the road? It had some of the big markets, you know, New York,

Jason Skidmore:
Yeah.

Malcolm Lui:
L.a..

Jason Skidmore:
Yeah. It's definitely something that we've thought about again, I think. I think as we look at that, we've talked a little bit about it and we have some platforms that are going to allow us to get there. So, for example, this year we are actually going to be at events in Indianapolis, Louisville, Cleveland as well. So we're beginning to broaden that reach a little bit. In most of the reason that we focused in that sort of Midwest geography, at least for now, is it has a very high percentage of those target clients that you asked me about earlier. Right. It has a very high concentration of those mid-sized businesses that are sort of driving those local economies and those local communities. And we feel like that's our first and best reaches into some of those.

Malcolm Lui:
Right. That makes sense. Have you considered two online events, having a virtual

Jason Skidmore:
We have.

Malcolm Lui:
Summit, for example?

Jason Skidmore:
Yeah. Yeah, we have we've we've not done any yet, but we've talked about that and that's in some of the plans that we're considering next year is doing some things online. We actually have a couple of our absentees that work for us that also our professors at local colleges and universities and they teach a lot of online courses. So we know that's that's something that's already part of their DNA and that they would be very comfortable delivering. So we've talked about it, but we haven't execute on it yet.

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah, I mean, there's some pluses to the. I mean, it's easier for people to attend their need to travel. It's less expensive, right? You don't need to book a hotel in New York and you'd be paying five bucks a night.

Jason Skidmore:
Yeah. No doubt, no doubt. Makes a big difference.

Malcolm Lui:
Now, when you when you organize your local events for 30 to 40, 30 to 50 key decision makers, how do you guys go about finding these people and getting them to commit? And Sheila.

Jason Skidmore:
You know, again, typically we just reach in to our client base or the base of prospects that we're working. They know us. They're familiar with us. We extend a personal invite to it. Our business development team leads the charge on that again, because it's a great way to show them that we want to add value. Yes, we're interested in doing business with them. But part of being a great partner as a person, just a vendor, is that value creation and being able to add value in some way to them. So it's typically not a difficult process between a little bit of marketing, dropping someone else and making some personal phone calls to ticket folks in.

Malcolm Lui:
Right now, you mentioned before the subject matter experts are doing these talks, are you leveraging that content onto the Web?

Jason Skidmore:
We are a little bit where appropriate. I mean, obviously, some of the content and some of the information that we share is it can be some somewhat proprietary. So we hope that we have the thinking more about that a little bit. And a lot of it comes from case studies or scenarios that we've experienced in client environments. Right. So we have to make sure that we a a little bit before before we publish or get too much of it out there. But that's something we've done a little bit of.

Malcolm Lui:
Right. I imagine a great way to expand your reach beyond your local presence. I mean,

Jason Skidmore:
Sure.

Malcolm Lui:
The topics

Jason Skidmore:
Yeah,

Malcolm Lui:
You or

Jason Skidmore:
Absolutely.

Malcolm Lui:
Your company deals with cybersecurity is that is of interest to every company.

Jason Skidmore:
Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. You know, I think that's the other piece that a lot of times are our key I.T. and accounting leaders have to deal with this. There is also such a massive amount of information out there and so much they can get that we find that they really love the idea of being able to sit in a room with somebody, you know, kind of a real person standing there talking to them a little bit. It just sort of validates that information sometimes.

Malcolm Lui:
For the 40 percent growth in 2019, how much of that was from new business vs.. More business from existing clients?

Jason Skidmore:
Yeah. So the way the numbers are shaped, digging out right now, we've actually driven close to seventy five per cent of our revenue this year from our existing clients and the other 25 percent coming from new clients. Now, that was the first half of the year in the second half of the year. We we've definitely through that quarterly planning process, we've definitely made a push in to some new account development. So I think those percentages are going to begin to shift and Malcolm Lui provide a crystal ball and a better man. I would say we're probably going to fish around 50 50. To be frank with you. So I think that growth that we're experiencing would probably fall in that same bucket. I think half of that's going to come from our existing clients doing more with us. And half of it is going to come from new clients that we've been referred into or found along the way.

Malcolm Lui:
For the new clients that you brought on board this year. How long was the sales cycle today? Was it years in the making? Or does that happen pretty fast?

Jason Skidmore:
Yeah. You know, it's really all over the board. You know, because when you think about the different levels of service we provide on the staffing side of what we do, that staff augmentation, the sales cycle can be very short. In fact, sometimes it can be almost instantaneous. They they have something come up. They have a need. They've heard of us there when somebody referred them to us and their client immediately. In other cases, we may be working those relationships for six to nine months before that first opportunity comes along. Now, on the project side and on the advisory side of what we do, the typical sales cycle is six to twelve months, especially in the cybersecurity space. I mean, these are big holistic business changes that we're making because cyber security really touches everything now. So the sales cycle on that is a little bit longer. You can take close to twelve months simply because buying has to come at a greater level than just the CIO. In fact, oftentimes it's maybe not even driven through the CIO and it's cybersecurity. It can be legal, it could be a compliance team, it can be the CFO. So there's a lot of other stakeholders that are involved. It's a much larger initiative. It's a much bigger span. And so the sales cycle on that can take a little bit longer. So we seem follow all over the place. But I would say on average, for us as a whole, it's probably six or nine months.

Malcolm Lui:
Right. What's a typical cybersecurity project? If there is a broad.

Jason Skidmore:
Well, yeah. I mean, that's just it. There isn't one, but. But I can absolutely put it into a typical format for you. I mean, for us, you know, keep in mind that there are so many different types of firms out there that deliver cybersecurity in different ways. And there are several different sort of niche areas that companies fall to for us. We would generally define ourselves for our clients as providing a virtual CSO service. CISO chief information security officer. OK. So our niche, if you will, is really about being able to come in and provide the strategic leadership for cyber security, helping them build and create a cybersecurity program and cyber security program as it's just a business plan for cyber for cyber security. And so, you know, typical for us, when we begin to engage with the client, it usually kicks off with a gap assessment. We're one of our security leaders, goes in and does an assessment of their environment, identify some gaps. And coming in the company, a gap assessment, a company with a roadmap of how they can remediate a lot of those issues. After that, it often turns into what I would call that traditional virtual CSO engagement, where they're retaining our services and that of our team to continue to drive or oversee those remediation efforts while also building the plan that the company can use and update moving forward as part of that effort. So they really get a fractional security leader as most of the businesses we deal with. Again, if they're in the mid-market, they they don't necessarily need someone doing that full time. But to have somebody on a fractional basis that they can lean into and get that expertise from tends to work really well. So typically we would go from that gap assessment to a remediation plan to delivering those services on an ongoing basis over a multi-year contract.

Malcolm Lui:
Right. Have you. Would you say that the perhaps the most typical biggest weakness for companies think of the cyber security, are their employees not following the policies?

Jason Skidmore:
One hundred percent. That is the number one thing that we typically find, and it's one of the first recommendations we always make is user awareness and training. It's either their and their employees not knowing the policies, their employee is not following the policies or maybe they don't have policies. Maybe they've never really done that. So much of what happens that we hear about all the time from the cybersecurity standpoint can actually be controlled through user education and awareness. Now, there are a million other threats out there that go beyond that, but the most successful certainly come through, you know, phishing campaigns and things that go directly to those end users. That's that's certainly the number one thing we see. No doubt about it.

Malcolm Lui:
Right. What's the current thinking solution about password management? Because I was working at one company that required me to change my password every 90 days, something like that had happened. Letters and upper lowercase and numbers and had to be these 12 characters long. And it's hard to remember all these things. So you end up doing stuff that makes it not secure. You write it down somewhere so that you don't forget it. So

Jason Skidmore:
Yeah.

Malcolm Lui:
You know, how can companies have a secure password but yet not make it so cumbersome that people end up writing it down on a posted note on their monitor?

Jason Skidmore:
Yeah, well, it's you've keyed in on a great topic. I mean, that is a very heated area of debate right now because some companies do still strongly believe in the philosophy of resetting passwords every 90 days. And others believe that that that could be a problem. To understand both sides of it, on the one hand, you know, if your password were to fall in the hands of somebody that wanted to do something negative with it. If you're changing it every 90 days, that's going to help prevent that. On the other hand, to your point, we all have dozens, if not close to closing in on almost 100 passwords to different accounts that we have. Right. Personally and professionally. And so what happens is the more passwords we have to have, the greater propensity to write them down and stick up on our desks or do something like that, which actually negates the whole process to begin with. Right. So. So it's kind of a fiery debate right now. But, you know, one of the first things that we always say is, you know, the use of especially at an individual level, the use of tools like password managers that allow people to remember for sure one password to gain that password manager where they store all their others so they can access it when they need them. Is it one great way to look to go about it? But. Yeah. You see, and especially as technology changes and security standards change, sometimes it's hard for a technologist or an I.T. department to control that because while they may have a certain standard internally, if they're using the software as a service, it's that software as a service may have a different set of requirements. Right. So it's sort of an ongoing evolution that embrace brings more important. I don't know that anybody is weighing in on a specific answer yet.

Malcolm Lui:
All right, what's your take on the smartphones that use like the biometrics? Right. Like, I always thought, you know, the touch I.D. and iPhone, incredibly convenient from you. No need to tighten passwords. But at the same time, it's so easy for a bad guy to to force me to use my thumb, to open my phone at the same time. What's your what's the recommendation when it

Jason Skidmore:
Yeah.

Malcolm Lui:
Comes to companies in that sort of thing?

Jason Skidmore:
Yeah, I mean, generally, the biometric stuff's generally a good thing because the reality is, even given the situation that you draw out about a bad guy forcing you to put your thumb on the phone. I mean, the reality of that happening, it's far less frequent than somebody trying to hack it. Right. So generally, I think the biometrics are seen as as a pretty positive thing. But again, there's varying things on that in it. And it's tough it's tough to get consistency across that. But you're right. It's convenient. It's convenient when you think of things like, you know, my iPhone and face recognition and even being able to approve payments by simply holding up the phone and showing it my face. It's a pretty convenient thing. So it's certainly an area that I think we'll continue to see a ton more evolution occur in terms of how strong those types of biometric readings can really be.

Malcolm Lui:
All right. Any interesting trends you see along the spaces that you provide consulting in?

Jason Skidmore:
You know, the biggest trends that we see right now, which which are both enablers and inhibitors in our business and all the spaces we serve. Accounting and finance, I.T. and cybersecurity. Right now there is a severe and significant talent gap out there. Right. And I think sometimes people think that talent gap is just how many open jobs are there or what's the unemployment rate. But it's much, much bigger than that. There's a tremendous gap between the positions that are and will be in demand in the next three years. And the education and training that's being provided. So that is that's a huge call it an area of opportunity. The trend we see is this movement toward how do we get, you know, individuals, whether it's whether it's young people coming up through school or whether it's redevelopment or of our existing workforce. How do we get people re-educate into the roles of the teacher and what are those roles of the teacher? And so that is a trend that just we continue to see be a very, very key component. Particularly as the use of technology in levering, leveraging, leveraging technology evolves so rapidly. You think of things like robotic process, automation. And I know that's a really bad word right now and a lot of circles because they hear job placement. And to a certain extent, that's true. To a certain extent, it's going to allow people to focus on higher value things that they can do for their business. But we definitely need to begin to evolve certain parts of our workforce to take on new and different roles that support these technologies as opposed to feeling replaced by these technologies. So that's the biggest trend that impacts not only our business, but the landscape. Well, we're all right now is how we continue to evolve that whole talent issue that exists. Other.

Malcolm Lui:
Technology changes so fast, though. How are you able to make a good predictor of which technology is going to stick and then encourage training among your own team to focus on that technology and not have to risk a few years later? Turns out that technology isn't one that was being adopted by the marketplace.

Jason Skidmore:
Yeah, it's difficult. I mean, we often talk about the difference between being leading edge versus bleeding edge, right? I mean, bleeding edge is you're right there on the forefront of the new technology breaking through and you jump on it and you adopt it and you believe it's the next big thing only to find out that either your back was right or you were wrong and you wasted a lot of time. So we tried to be a little bit more leading edge. So what we do is we wait to see which technologies, what platforms really start to emerge and get talked about most frequently. We look at early adoption scenarios that are taking place. How did they do? Was it was it a great thing or an epic fail? Right. Because that's a very important that rate of adoption is a very key component. So what we've learned to do is wait in and sort of continue to keep our eye on the market, continue to keep our eye on those things. And, you know, we have a great opportunity to go out and talk to our clients every day when they meet with. Right. So we hear what they're hearing. We learn what they're doing. And then we've learned to respond very quickly by providing our teams the training they need. Once we've decided, well, here's one that's going to be really hot, we can get them trained up really quickly on that. We can find other subject matter experts who are leaders in that space and get them involved in initiatives with our team, which also helps cross, train and bring those efficiencies to the table. So it's a balancing act. No doubt about it. And we just look for those trends around. OK. What are we hearing most about? Of course, there's tons of research and organizations like Gartner out there that really can do a lot of that work for us and tell us what's going on. So we just have to keep a close eye on it.

Malcolm Lui:
Three final questions for you, Jason. What message would you. What message would you show on a billboard along the freeway? It's only going to be seen for six seconds or less.

Jason Skidmore:
I think the message would say about our business. Your projects completed, period. I mean, at the end of the day, that's really what we're after, is we want our clients to understand we're here to help you get your major projects, your initiatives done, regardless of how we have to go about delivering that, regardless of which way you use us for it. We want to get projects completed, period. I think that's what I would say.

Malcolm Lui:
All right. Good one. And much to ask questions for you. Can you recap again who your ideal clients are and what's the best way for them to contact your company?

Jason Skidmore:
Sure, absolutely. Again, our ideal clients would be those middle market organizations that are going through growth. They're experiencing change. They're transforming their environment. You know, those are scenarios where you probably provide our highest value. As I mentioned before, we work with small to large million dollar organizations. But our highest value and in our ally and my opinion comes with those middle market companies. And the best way for them to reach us. So I'd encourage them to visit our Web site at Brno. This B E R O B, I asked com right there. We can. They can pick up a chat with us. They can request additional information and connect with us in a multitude of ways.

Malcolm Lui:
Jason, it's been awesome having you on my show today. I really enjoyed hearing how you grew your company so fast.

Jason Skidmore:
Malcolm, thank you. It's been my pleasure to be on it. I appreciate your questions. They're excellent.

Malcolm Lui:
We've been speaking with Jason Skidmore, the CEO of Vernovis, about his company's rapid growth. For interviews with other fast growing, high value sales companies, or to learn how we can accelerate your firm's high value sales through automation, visit Eversprint.com.

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