James Moak never aspired to be an entrepreneur.
As Business Report details in the Executive Spotlight feature in the new issue, Moak began his career in technology at Evans-Graves Engineers in the early ’90s as a CAD engineer and network administrator.
Later, he worked his way up to partner in a network consulting firm. But he wanted desperately to build a workplace culture that employees enjoyed and saw their careers thrive, and—in turn—clients would benefit from the resulting exceptional service.
So in 2005, he took the leap into business ownership and started Gulf South Technology Solutions.
“’I didn’t know what I didn’t know,’ as they say,” Moak admits. “But I spent a lot of time reading and attending business conferences and learning the ropes.”
In 2010, he also joined EO, The Entrepreneurs Organization, and continued to learn and work on the business. Today, he owns two companies and is a partner in a third. Gulf South made the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies in the nation twice—once in 2011 and again in 2015.
The latter year, his company also moved into its own digs on Goodwood Boulevard.
“Although there are many facets to my job, most people don’t know how many times throughout the day these facets must be juggled, challenged and changed to keep things running smoothly for our clients,” Moak says. “And yes, some days are better than others and no matter how well you prepare, technology breaks at many different levels and when it does we adjust and respond accordingly.”
Read the full Executive Spotlight feature. Here’s a sample of what you will find:
How difficult is it to keep up with the latest trends in an ever-evolving field like IT?
This is one of the hardest parts of our job as a company and it is difficult. We must not only stay up with the latest in business technology tools, but also network, data and information security. As a team, we have split it up somewhat so that we can learn as much as we can as quick as we can. No one person in any IT company can keep up with all of it.
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