Bill Schrom refers to his job as trying to “stay in touch with my insanity.”
“You’ve got to like what you’re doing,”
says Schrom, CEO of Geotrace
Technologies Inc., a provider of sub-surface imaging solutions. “If you don’t
really enjoy it or if you’re not willing to live
it and give up sleep for it, you’re probably
not going to be successful. I spend a lot of
time on the business. It intrudes into my
personal life, but I try to keep a balance.”
By tapping into the talents of others and soliciting feedback from customers and vendors, Schrom has
found that balance to lead Geotrace
through a global expansion, growing 2006 revenue to $41 million,
with anticipated 2007 revenue of
$54 million.
Smart Business spoke with
Schrom about how patience and a
love of coffee can be valuable
traits in global business success.
Q: What are some keys to successful global expansion?
You have to have people who
are willing to travel and adapt to
other cultures. There is not a lot
of glamour in business travel. I
remember having this one young
lady towing along behind me on
a rainy evening in Oslo, Norway,
giving me a death stare. If you’re
high-strung and believe the
whole world revolves around
Texas, you’re probably not
going to be able to do it.
You need someone who is
willing to learn about how
another culture works. What you find is
you go into the Middle East, you’re going
to go have coffee with somebody 15 times
before you’re going to talk business with
them. You have to understand if you’re
pushy, you’re not going to make it.
Q: How do you assess whether you have
people who are able to adapt?
I will go, or one of the other guys who
has traveled a lot will go, with somebody
the first couple of trips just to see how
they do. Sometimes people think it will be fun or a great time, and they find out it’s a
lot of work. Your body is jet-lagged and
your sleeping habits go all haywire, and
they just can’t take it.
You can gauge it and think this person
can do it, but until you go on the road for
a couple of trips, you really can’t say for
sure. That represents a cost to the company, but it’s a good investment. If you’re
going to rely on this person, you really
have to feel comfortable that they can
work in the new area.
We always touch base with clients and
find out what they are thinking and what
they have to say about the operation. Get
a third-party perspective on what the
operation is doing and what it looks like.
Q: What is the CEO’s role in successful
growth?
Get out and talk to your people. Listen to
them, and if you tell somebody you are
going to do something, deliver on it.
Get out and see your clients. At times, you can get locked in being in the forest
and forget what your clients think about
you and believe about you. Stay in touch
with your vendors because your vendors
can help you with new ideas and different
approaches.
There is a whole group of people looking at your business from a different perspective, and they tend to think outside
the box that you have established for
yourself.
Q: How do you get yourself out of that
box?
It’s really getting out and not
hiding in an office. It’s getting out
and visiting with people and pushing it down so the people that
report to me do the same thing and
the people that report to them do
the same thing.
I have an open-door policy, so anybody can walk in. It causes interruptions and changes the things I can
get accomplished sometimes, but it’s
very valuable. I go out and walk
around and look over their shoulders
and ask what they are doing.
Q: How do you define success?
We can have 500 different metrics to
run the beast, but if it’s not making
money, we have nothing. (Employees)
know that’s what we’re all about.
Either through generating revenue or
cutting cost or looking at ways to do
things more efficiently, the people are
pretty well set that we have to be making money.
It works because people want to be
part of an organization that is making
money. People want to make money. If
we’re working in a place where they are
not interested in the company making
money or in them making money, we’ve
got a big problem.
That is the goal. We have to make
money. By understanding that, they kind
of watch our back. They make sure
expenses don’t run over, and they treat it
as their money.
HOW TO REACH: Geotrace Technologies Inc., (281) 497-8440
or www.geotrace.com