Today we’d like to introduce you to Corbitt Grow.
Hi Corbitt, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
To start from the beginning, I was born and raised in Japan and Malaysia for the first 15 years of my life. Growing up around people from so many different cultures and backgrounds helped me learn early on that I loved meeting and working with others. However, my start in technology began at AT&T where, out of college, I was accepted into their B2B Sales Development Program in Dallas, TX. That’s where I spent 4 months learning their portfolio of fiber, voice, and cybersecurity services and entered their enterprise salesforce. In a class of about 100 hires, we were individually stack-ranked against one another based on quota attainment throughout the 4 months. At the end of it, only about 40 positions were made available, and thankfully, I earned a spot in the top 10 and selected my position and location of choice – a Mid-Market Fiber Sales Executive position in Chicago, IL. I spent about 3 years in Chicago selling and consulting with companies from 10-1000 employees before taking a promotion at headquarters in Dallas, TX, as a senior technical sales consultant.
My time at AT&T was incredibly challenging, especially in the early months as a new sales executive in a rigid, cut-throat corporate environment. It was very much sink or swim, but I had an excellent sales manager who was tough on me but pushed me to develop into one of the consistent top performers in the segment. AT&T taught me how to be a professional, communicate with executives, sell, and have rigor and discipline in my career. I met some excellent peers and mentors with whom I have talked regularly since leaving the company. The decision to leave AT&T and join Anderson Technologies took work. I had developed some key relationships at AT&T HQ and could see a long, fruitful career there. However, Anderson Technologies (AT) was more than just another job for me.
I’d already known of AT for many years in the context of it being a family-run company founded by my father-in-law and mother-in-law, Mark and Amy Anderson. Funnily enough, my wife, Hadley, and I worked at AT&T (she was in cybersecurity, and I was in sales), which means the skills and industries we worked in went hand-in-hand with what Anderson Technologies does as a managed IT services firm. Over 18 months, we had conversations with Mark and Amy about what it might look like for us to join Anderson Technologies. These discussions included what roles we could fulfill, what the needs were, how to work together with family, how we would need to pave our way, and so on. It never felt quite right for us to leave our careers at AT&T and move home to St. Louis, MO, so the conversations remained just that—conversations.
It was not until my wife and I took our first wedding anniversary trip to Yellowstone and Jackson Hole that we had enough “unplugged” time to reflect on our lives and goals at a 30,000-foot view and discuss what we wanted. That’s how we decided to pursue opportunities at the family business and seriously interview. Within two weeks, we were in St. Louis for several interviews. Shortly after that, we put our notice at AT&T and began packing our Dallas apartment to move to St. Louis.
I joined as the only account manager for Anderson Technologies, and my focus was to not only provide relationship management for all our primary/executive contacts at our clients but also to build up the Account Management/Client Success department to have systems, processes, and structure for supporting growth in new clients and team members.
After about a year, I received a promotion to Business Development Manager, where I am now responsible for the account management of existing clients and the sales team that goes after new client acquisitions. It’s been an incredibly rewarding year-and-a-half filled with learning, fulfillment, challenges, growth, and relationship-building. I’m so, so grateful to be here! As an aside, my wife Hadley now leads Anderson Archival, the digital preservation arm of Anderson Technologies!
It wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It’s certainly been a life-changing experience that I am so happy and grateful to be a part of, but I would be lying if I said it’s all been a smooth road.
One of the biggest challenges has been the adjustment from the Fortune 500 AT&T environment to the SMB space. At a company like AT&T, all systems, processes, responsibilities, channels, etc., are well-defined and identifiable. You have your job, your metrics, and how to do it, and you do it. That’s a major oversimplification, but that’s true in a nutshell. At a small and evolving firm, processes, communications, and even offerings are constantly being evaluated for how they can be improved, and that requires us to be agile, flexible, and deliberate in how we go about our everyday tasks and duties.
Also, a blessing and a challenge with being a small company is that market changes are much closer to home. The blessing is that we are smaller and agile; whatever changes we want can be executed much more quickly than at a large company. However, determining what those changes are and making the decisions around them is not easy and always poses a fulfilling and thought-provoking challenge for us to work through together.
Technology is developing so rapidly, so as a managed IT services partner, we’re constantly looking ahead to gauge what technology frontiers we want to explore next to best serve our clients, and making sure our company goals and strategy align with those moves is an incredibly important, challenging, and exciting process to be involved in.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
As mentioned, Anderson Technologies is a managed IT services firm or MSP. Essentially, we provide outsourced IT services to businesses and organizations that can now rest easy knowing that every aspect of their IT is handled by a team of experts, including projects like moving locations, upgrades, venturing into new software solutions, and even long-term IT consulting to enable growth. Anderson Technologies stands out in St. Louis, Missouri, and across numerous other states, as a pioneer in removing IT limitations. What may seem impossible to other IT providers, our team has consistently confronted and resolved, implementing solutions that significantly enhance the day-to-day operations of our clients.
In both my roles as Account Manager and Business Development Manager, I’ve encountered countless clients (and future clients) who, most succinctly, feel stuck or even afraid when they think about their organization’s IT. Our goal is to transform that. Don’t have an in-house IT team or IT partner that meets your needs? We can help. Do your employees complain that existing IT systems are preventing them from working effectively? We can help. Are you facing compliance or regulations and feeling overwhelmed by what your business needs to maintain? We can help. We specialize in regulated industries impacted by the SEC and HIPAA. Have you already suffered a cyberattack, or know that one could ruin your business? We can help!
In deciding to join the Anderson Technologies team, one of the most significant factors that Hadley and I considered, and one of the most significant factors that set this company apart, is our Core Values. These values touch everything we do, from operations, company culture, hiring, and interacting with our clients.
Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
If you want to hear more from me (and from Anderson Technologies Founding Principal Mark Anderson), our latest webinar, Level Up Your Cybersecurity Stance: Going Above and Beyond the Baseline, is available on our website. https://andersontech.com/
Contact Info:
- Website: https://andersontech.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/
andersontech1995 - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/
people/Anderson-Technologies/ 100063715233110/ - Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/
corbitt-grow-067a37126/ - Meet With Corbitt: https://crm.andersontech.com/
meetings/corbitt-grow?uuid= 3c8a23fa-3d22-4381-88b8- a53ecdd2dc3b
