09 Jun Customer-Centric Tech Support With Jon Schram – CEO And Founder Of The Purple Guys

How many things come up when you Google “purple tech support”? Just one, and it’s the Purple Guys. Matthew Sullivan’s guest today is Jon Schram, the CEO and Founder of the tech support company known for its unique branding. Jon shares how the color purple came to be their trademark and talks about the company’s evolution and how they got to where they are now. He also talks about the impact of COVID on how they operate their business, getting into how their service offerings are similar and different at the same time. Finally, he shares his insight on how the working environment has changed – leaning into remote work – and the need to evolve alongside it.

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CUSTOMER-CENTRIC TECH SUPPORT WITH JON SCHRAM – CEO AND FOUNDER OF THE PURPLE GUYS

Have you noticed that Zoom has added this voice that says, “Recording in progress?”

Yes, I noticed that.

How do I switch this off? Thank God, I have a tech guy on the line. Is it like being a dentist? When I say, “Jon, what game are you in?” You say, “I’m a CEO of a tech support company.” I go, “Oh.” You never guess what. Why does my computer not work? Do you get that a lot? It’s a bit like if you’re a dentist, “Would you mind looking at my tooth while you’re here?”

I do get it, but anybody who’s known me for any length of time knows that I don’t have any answers. I just happen to know the company, much past the turn it on and off again is about the extent of mine.

I saw this great meme many years ago. When the tech support companies were beginning to set out, one of the guys apparently was fired because having been through this hour-long consultation with this customer, in the end, he said, “Look at the back of your computer. Do you see a black cord?” The woman said, “Yes.” He said, “Does it go into a socket in the wall?” She said, “Yes.” He said, “Unplug it, lift it up, put your computer in a cardboard box, and send it back to the person that you bought it from because you should not have a computer in your house.” Are you ever tempted when you get to the end of your tether to explain to people, “Sometimes, you are better off with just pen and paper?”

The problem is not always technical. That is for sure.

I can see you are going for the politicians. The role of the CEO clearly involves politics and technical acumen.

We have got some fun stories.

I want to know them all, but what is it with you and grapes?

Grapes are just purple, so it kept with the purple theme.

Staying top of mind so clients remember to call you is supercritical in the tech world.

Did it start with grapes or were grapes just a byproduct of the purple?

Grapes were a byproduct. The evolution of Purple Guys, how we got to be where we are now. I am an unintentional serial entrepreneur, which is a story all by itself. I had two successful business startups and two unsuccessful partnerships and then wound up with what is now The Purple Guys. In my second iteration of a startup, we happen to have a purple logo so it had nothing to do with Purple Guys. It’s just the company logo was in purple. My only good marketing idea I have ever had is a purple pen that writes in purple ink. When I had that company, we had a purple logo and I’m like, “I need company pens and I will get them that write in the company color.”

When I started this business, I’m not that creative. I hired an ad agency and I said, “Whatever we name the company doesn’t matter. We are going to have a purple logo because I’m keeping my purple pens.” We had a purple logo. This was several years ago when we opened the doors. All the stuff we did back then from an IT support perspective had to be done on-site. We bought people company uniforms, a shirt with the logo on it. We had a whole bunch of different colors. I sat in a meeting one day. I worked with my wife at the time. We left the meeting and there had been six of us from the company in the meeting and we all wore a different color company shirt. We got out of the meeting and she was like, “That’s ridiculous. We look like a bunch of Skittles. We need a company uniform.”

I’m simple. I’m like, “I’m just going to get purple shirts because that is the company color.” I got purple shirts and within two weeks of us showing up on-site, our customers from that point forward are like, “The purple guys are here.” Our customers came up with the name. We ran with it and then it’s been a fun brand since then. Everything else associated with purple has come along because of the color. Grapes are just one of the things we like to use.

 

You go grapeness, which I saw as a great pun. Do you remember years ago, a telecoms company born out of Hong Kong called Hutchison Whampoa came up with a new network and they called it Orange? It was a network that became the most competitive network at that time. They must have spent millions of dollars coming up with doing all the market research. What you have done effectively has created something as equally efficient but through sheer skill and ability on your part, so hats off to you. It’s fine. Did you notice the unintended consequences that your company suddenly took something which was technical and complex? You wrapped it in this friendly name. Did it have that layer of humanity that you could noticeably see when you went to see your customers?

It absolutely did. It took the wall down between, “You are a tech guy.” Many years ago, it was hard to find adult male clothing that was purple. I have several pairs of shoes that are also in purple.

It’s good of you to be able to say that out loud and be proud of it.

My daughters all had purple shoes and daddy had purple shoes to match, which was fun.

That was your secret. You guys with your purple patch.

It softens that harsh technical tone. We have lots of women that work at the company, but we all show up wearing purple. It creates a second glance. It sparks a conversation that’s not around the tech stuff.

It’s important because you are operating in a competitive space. How do they contact you? Is it proactive or reactive in most cases? In other words, do they reach out to you because they know that it’s something that they need to set up from the beginning to solve problems, or are most of your initial contact is from people who have run into problems and need a quick solution?

The vast majority is somebody has their hair on fire for whatever reason on the technical side. It is rare that it is a calm initial introduction when they are reaching out to us. Staying top of mind so that they remember to call you is super critical in our world. That is what the accidental brand has done for us because if I can get someone to associate the color purple with that tech or computer stuff, the next time they are frustrated, when you Google Purple tech support, we are much the only thing that comes up. It’s been a wonderful brand.

Even though the brands may appear accidental, there is an enormous amount of thought and planning. I’m sure you are being far too humble in terms of the amount of energy that you put into it. Tell me a bit more about your background. Did you have a long-term technical background? Did you work for other companies? Did you decide to go on your own? You mentioned you are a serial entrepreneur. Was that a happenstance that brought you into this space?

I had always wanted to start something. I graduated with an industrial engineering degree from the University of Michigan and I knew I did not want to go into the automotive industry. The University of Michigan is right next to Detroit. I went into consulting and didn’t know what it meant to be in the consulting world.

I don’t think anyone does. That is the magic.

I’m like, “I don’t have to decide what I’m doing. I will be a consultant.” It was for Pricewaterhouse.

That is not a shabby firm. That is a decent outfit.

It was a long time ago and it was with their MIS division, Management Information Systems.

Did you wear black?

My only option was a white shirt or a blue shirt and a dark suit. That was the dress code of Pricewaterhouse at the time. It was a lot of fun. I did a lot of project work. I saw mostly Fortune 1000 and Fortune 5000 businesses from the project to consulting side of things. I absolutely loved it. I traveled all over the place. I met my wife on one of my projects, which was a huge benefit of having that job. Once we got engaged and decided we were going to get married, I’m like, “This travel thing isn’t as fun anymore.” That ended that career, but I always had this entrepreneurial bug to start something. I didn’t know what I was going to start. I wound up writing a business plan and then going into business with my wife. Our first endeavor is we opened a branch office for her company. That was very successful.

You must be the first entrepreneur I have ever come across who wrote a business plan before you did something.

I’m an engineer, so I have to write things down. I love a checklist or a spreadsheet. I couldn’t do it without that.

Normally, you did it afterward to try and figure out where all the money went as opposed to, “Don’t worry. It will be okay. We will make it work.” What was your wife’s business at the time?

To be customer-centric, you got to have good, repeatable processes. Otherwise, you are just winging it every day.

It was an IT staffing firm so technical temping. We were in Chicago at the time and we moved to Kansas City to start a branch office at that company. It was wildly successful on the business side. We came here in June of 1996 and by October of 1996, we are on a $1 million run rate just in Kansas City. It was a rocket ship of revenue. It was recurring revenue month over month. That is when the owner of that company who we went business with did the math on what he was going to have to pay us because we had a 38-page operating agreement coupled up how we were going to split the profits from the branch. He was like, “You would be the most highly paid people in the company.” I’m like, “I’m an engineer. I did the math ahead of time. I knew how the math worked out.” He was like, “That is not possible.” That is what brought an end to that initial endeavor.

You have this tension between mathematics and reality like, “I don’t care what the math says. This isn’t going to work because I’m paying you too much.” It’s this reality shift. We are going to change space and time. I suppose it was a natural shift because you are seeing all of the problems that your guys are solving. You effectively moved into your own consultancy business where you are the principal in your consulting in a specific area.

I did start up number two and this was again in Kansas City. We left that because he wasn’t going to pay us. We started another business and my wife’s uncle was the funding. I’m a slow learner. The first time, the partnership was not great. The second time, I should have realized I didn’t need a partner, but thought that we needed some financial backing, so we went into business with my wife’s uncle. That business was wildly successful. We did technical temping again. This was back in the IT staffing world. We went from $0 to $10 million in revenue in four years. The more successful we are at, the worse the relationship became with my wife’s uncle to the point where we had to leave.

The way I got introduced to what I do now was as we were going through that hockey stick, crazy growth trajectory, I used to know enough having the engineering background and coming out of the consulting world to do some of the technical work that we do now. I realized, “I have better things as the president of the company I should be doing.” I was going to hire somebody to bring him inside our four walls and take care of the tech stuff. One of the folks that worked for me said, “Why not hire somebody that does this part-time? You should outsource your IT support. Hire somebody as a temp,” so I did. I hired them part-time and they came in. I had an IT staffing firm and I was outsourcing my IT support. I liked the model. When we decided to leave, which we did and we left, that was my introduction to this world.

This is about timing. This would have been 2000 or something like that?

Timing is everything. We resigned our position in a $10 million company with a lot of angst about money and stuff on September 10th, 2001. Next day is 9/11. It was perfect timing.

I remember funny enough, where were you when Kennedy was shot. There are certain defining moments. You like a challenge.

When we run into economic bumps, I started a business right after 9/11. We opened the doors and figured out how to survive.

What could possibly go wrong? I’m thinking about that time. In terms of connectivity, broadband was still a bit of a pipe dream. Primarily, connectivity was Banyan VINES.

It was in inner office networks mostly. Lotus Notes was a big messaging platform at the time.

A lot of it is going to be internal stuff like main server breakdowns. I suppose it didn’t have anything like this number of people that were tech aware then as you do now. Is that a fair comment?

 

Correct. It’s the same but different. There is a lot of people that think they are tech aware, but they don’t know how the technology works. They just assume everything works perfectly. When there is an issue, it’s like, “I know at home, this always works.” I’m like, “It doesn’t work always at home. You forget the time zone. It doesn’t work at home.”

You are bringing back some flashbacks. I’m having slight PTSD from Windows 98, NT, and all this stuff where it’s worked. You could rely on it to be unreliable. You are effectively beginning your company in a space that’s about to explode because in the 2000s, that is when technology, adoption, and all these new layers of general development came in. Were you ever tempted to diversify into software development or platform design? Did you find yourself snowed under with the lane that you were in?

It was where we wound up at the time. Small businesses were still thriving and they still needed support. The big businesses were frozen there in time for a little bit right after 9/11. We went headfirst into the small business world and I will tell you what made us successful. It took me almost a year to figure this out. I thought we were in the business of providing technical support. What I realized was we are in the business of providing customer service around using your technology, which is a different thing.

If you hire technical folks who want to make technical things work, they don’t like to talk to people. They want to make sure the technical thing is working and move on. We shifted our hiring. We shifted our focus to hire customer service-oriented professionals who happen to know how to use technology because you ultimately do have to fix a technical issue every once in a while. A lot of times, it is more the explanation of how to use what it is you are trying to use versus there is something technically wrong with it.

We all have experienced this. You say apples and I hear bananas. Particularly when people are trying to explain what a technical problem is. How did you find it? Do you find it difficult finding that strange breed of people that are technically aware on one side but able to communicate?

It’s hard to find the folks that want to talk to people and like technology. They are few and far between. We have wrapped processes around it because the vast majority of the technical staff that we hire are introverts. This whole world of doing everything remotely was a huge win for us because we don’t have to do as much face-to-face anymore. There was a lot of uncomfortableness with that anyway. That helped accelerate our world. It is an art form to find the right person to fit the jobs that we want. We started using a personality profiling system early on in our business.

You mentioned how working remotely has helped your business. The impact of COVID has altered the dynamics of how people operate their businesses. A lot of people now work from home and many of those people won’t ever be going back to an office either because they don’t want to or because their company doesn’t want them to either because it’s more efficient. How has that helped or not helped your business?

How it helped originally was our world is fragmented, so the world of tech support, especially in the small business world. We focus on companies that are between 20 and 200 employees, so it is the smaller end of small business. Almost every one of those companies is outsourcing to somebody. They might have somebody on staff, but the vast majority of them are using some external tech providers. How it helped early on was there was a literal tidal wave of work. We have 6,000 or so people we support in the Kansas City metropolitan area. Pre-COVID, maybe 1,000 of those people were set up to work from home. In a two-week period, we set up the other 5,000 people. We happen to have the capacity to deal with that.

That early tidal wave of work that was generated by the pandemic put a highlighter on, “This company has capacity.” I thought I had support and I realized I don’t have any support. We picked up a whole bunch of customers right on the backside of that in the May to June 2020 timeframe. As that has leveled out, our ability to effectively help people has gotten better because it’s not like, “How quickly can you get here?” That is not even a thing anymore. It’s like, “You can help me right now. Please remotely connect to my computer and take care of it,” which was what we were pushing for pre-pandemic. The pandemic accelerated that for three years. All of a sudden, it’s like, “I don’t need to wait for you to get over here. Just help me.” It has improved our efficiency.

What is your feedback? What are you seeing from businesses in terms of people that are working from home? Do you think that it’s here to stay or as the impact of COVID begins to subside, do you think we are in a “new normal” now? Do you think our working environment has now changed forever?

We are in a permanent hybrid where flexibility is going to exist for just about every single position. There are shipping and receiving type jobs where you physically got to be somewhere, but other than that, this is now a permanent hybrid world where there is going to be coordinated times when people do get together physically to do the team building events and build some of that culture. People have figured out how to build culture and stay connected remotely with multiple Zoom meetings and virtual happy hours, which to me is like sitting in a room drinking alone while you are watching television. That is similar.

There is nothing wrong with that. It’s maligned, but you take what you can get.

It’s here to stay.

Your business then, how is that going to change as your core business run being IT-focused? Do you see yourself being much more of a service provider where you are enabling this type of change in the environment? You have to evolve as well because your demands are not just technical now. What is the best solution? You are moving perhaps into a vendor situation.

The service offerings are similar and different. There was a lot of consistency previously when a 40-person company, most of those 40 people were inside the same four walls. There is a consistency in terms of how do they connect to the internet? What is on their desk? What is the speed of their connection? What phone system do they use? There is a lot of consistency. What happened when everybody went remote is, all of a sudden, we had 40 different types of connections and 40 different work environments.

At the end of the day, this is a freaking awesome country. There’s so much potential and opportunity.

Did anyone try to connect via modem?

I did not ever hear about it.

I missed that sound, the chirping. You have that change where you have all these different moving parts now. Are you being approached now where you fix something for us before you support us? Before, it’s like, “What the hell do we do to move our salesforce into the cloud?” Is it much more of a proactive position?

We have had a lot of those strategic discussions of, if they are already in the cloud, they saw the benefit of, “That wasn’t that hard because it was already all out there and didn’t matter where we were.” If they weren’t in the cloud, we had a lot of discussions about what can be moved out and what physically has to stay inside the four walls and be close to machines. If you are in a manufacturing environment, some of that stuff has to be physically next to the devices that are out of the manufacturing floor.

What we do in that customer service aspect became even more important because that troubleshooting and the way I would describe it, that bedside manner of the person on the other end of the phone or on the other side of the screen. How you are asking the questions and talking someone through of like, “Your camera thing is not slid open. That is why your camera is not working.” Been there, done that a bunch of times.

I have never ever done that apart from the times that I have gone through everything. I was like, “I will just peel the sticker off.” The value of companies like yours is in that customer relationship. It’s not just about the provision of IT services. It’s the fact that you own that relationship. If you can build that trusted status with your customer, which all of the branding and all of the people skills that you bring helps you do, then you act as the gatekeeper to all these other services. People naturally will come to you and say, “We need this cloud-based CRM system. Which one should we get?”

We get asked that a lot. We want to be that trusted advisor and we work hard to have that relationship. We want to be able to talk to the individual user who is having trouble printing at home or forgot their password or something is running slow. We also want to have that conversation with the CEO and the chief operating officer on how do you move something that is inside of your four walls out to the cloud, do it affordably, keep it secure, and keep people trained on the security aspects of this. That is the other piece. It’s both annoying, but part of life is anytime there is a catastrophe, people are going to try to take advantage of it. The number of cyberattacks, cybercriminals and bad stuff happening out there in the world has grown exponentially. We have had a lot of those conversations as well.

Security is a big issue because you are moving stuff out of a controlled environment. There are also people that will spectacularly call people and suggest that they connect to their computer so that they can take control of their PC and accidentally enter their bank accounts. There is all of that. Would you say that COVID, even though it has been a terrible experience for most of us, has changed the dynamics of your industry? IT and the ability to work remotely has become absolutely crucial as opposed to one of those things that we won’t have to do.

It made it hyper-critical that people stayed connected and the way they stay connected was through the use of technology. If their technology didn’t work, they needed to be able to call somebody. It put a huge focus on the service aspect, that service desk side of what we do.

What errors or standard mistakes or typical mistakes do you come across most of all when companies try and move from that previous environment where everyone was in a controlled space to move out to the cloud? What do you see that happens time and time again?

The things we saw early on, and most people have gotten over this, is they didn’t have an adequate workspace or work environment at home. It’s one thing to have a laptop and be able to take it anywhere you go. If you are used to sitting at a desk where your laptop is plugged into two giant monitors sitting next to it, a full-size keyboard, and a company desk and you expect the same productivity out of someone who operates on one tiny little screen with the little trackpad. Make sure you budget for those types of things. Most companies have gotten there. Although we still have conversations about that.

The other piece that goes with that is it’s the training to use the collaboration tools. Microsoft Teams is a good one to point out. Microsoft stock has gone crazy as part of this work remotely. Teaching people how to use those communication channels. If they weren’t used to using the instant messenger function that was baked in, almost everybody had one, but they would shout down the hall or get up and walk down the hall. Now, they can’t do that, so how do you use those platforms?

It takes us back to what you said, where the business that you are in is not technology. It’s getting people to use technology. You are introducing new technologies and new ways of doing business, but it’s still it’s always about people. That is probably the biggest challenge for any business if you grow. How much has your business grown over the last few years, would you say?

We were growing about 25% a year. We saw much of that same growth in 2020. We brought on a new partner as Purple Guys, so we are now a 150-person company.

It wasn’t that uncle chap again. Was he forgiven when you brought new?

No. Definitely not the uncle.

I promise never to mention that again. Sorry. He is not your original partner either.

It’s brand new folks. We are 150 people now. We are in Kansas City, Shreveport, Louisiana, and New Orleans. It’s a much bigger organization. We have grown considerably.

Do you see your role changing to be much more strategic, if that is possible? Are you looking at potential growth by acquisition? You got up to that critical mass.

We are absolutely looking to do more acquisitions. We are looking for people that are in our space, that Midwest, Southeast geography. It is the same culture we have though because there are different ways to approach this business. Finding the other companies that have that customer-centric, good repetitive processes because in order to do that well, you got to have repeatable processes. Otherwise, you are just winging it every day and you can’t control the customer. I’m an engineer, so this is near and dear to my heart.

You have proven processes now. You have 150 people and many years of operating experience in this defined space. You have weathered the storm and created processes that allow you to leverage that. Do you see yourself staying in a particular geographic area or do you think this is potentially a national brand?

It’s definitely got the potential to be national. With the way businesses work now, there is nothing to say that we can’t help a company on either coast, even though we are right in the middle of the country. What we would like to see is a geographic focus. Still Midwest, Southeast, Gulf South, that kind of a focus. Just so we have some critical mass in a certain area because there still are things that we refer to as rolling a truck. You have physically got to go there and touch something to fix it. It helps from a control standpoint, but theoretically, we could go coast to coast and provide support.

I’m sure that the demand is certainly there because of the market. In the last couple of years, what was your biggest challenge? What do you think was the thing that caught you by surprise? Was it the reaction that people had? What was the thing that surprised you most when you were operating your business in this new environment?

Having tried to convince people that the cloud was a better and more stable world, even though it did carry a little bit higher price tag. It surprised me how quickly people were like, “Cloud? Awesome. Let’s do it.” The barrier disappeared. It almost was like, “Don’t you want to know why?” “No, I don’t care. Just make it work.” It was the solution that showed up. It had been there for a long time. That was a surprise how quickly people’s views on the cloud from, “I need to be able to see it, touch it, and feel it. There’s my stuff.” That is utterly, completely gone.

That is a big thing because people love the idea of having physical equipment that they can hear buzzing away with lights flashing. I always remember going through server farms. You have to pay a premium for the lights because the lights meant that something was happening, even though it didn’t mean anything relevant. You have effectively created a brand that is transportable. It’s something that does move seamlessly across all sorts of different states, people, geographies, and time zones. How much of this success do you attribute to your engineering mindset as opposed to this crazy typical entrepreneur?

You can grow to a certain extent. You can grow a company bigger than ours flying by the seat of your pants. I couldn’t because my brain doesn’t work that way. For me, what caused us to get to the critical mass where we are from the standpoint of how we structure our business. I don’t like the philosophy of having to go out and win at new every month. I like recurring revenue. Our business has always been a recurring revenue business. How we generate that recurring revenue has changed over the years and what it’s exactly tied to. It has always been monthly recurring revenue so that is part of that process thought.

I used to have a couple of telecoms businesses where we would resell minutes. It’s perfect once you have a customer every month, unless something awful happens. That recurring income and other corner stains that you have come across where you sit there in an idle moment, scratch your head, and say, “Recurring income. That is what we want.” What other things would be on your wish list? What would you suggest to someone that starting out, things to look for, things to go for in a business?

Every business needs a customer so how do you attract the customer? It’s much easier when you have customers to run a business.

Creative business that people probably want is the first thing.

Find that need. I didn’t create the need for network support, but I figured out a good way to solve the problem. A slightly better mousetrap, if you will.

That is so critical. Many people start businesses with a product hoping that they will find a need. To be as successful as someone like you, you need to start with a problem where you provide a solution. You are saying it’s the better mousetrap. I don’t think you need to change the world completely. Just do something a little bit better, particularly in your space because there is such a huge demand.

It’s a huge market. That is the other thing. Find a market where there is a broad enough base that you can have a piece of that and have a solid company. There is something like 30,000 managed services providers in the US. It might even be more than that. Few of them achieve our size, but you have a comfortable business with a 5 or a 10-person firm.

The excitement of being where you are in that position where you can start thinking more strategically, where you got this base, “How do we take it to the next?” That must be the exciting times. That takes you out of that day-to-day. It makes your thinking much more intelligent and strategic.

The growth and building something have always been fascinating to me. Something wasn’t there yesterday and you could make it new now, and then see if it goes and it works. That is what I love about this business. We only deal with small businesses. It’s fascinating to me how many different ways there are to make a living running a small business. I never cease to get blown away like, “No way. Is there enough revenue in that little niche thing?” “It’s a $30 million business.” I’m like, “Wow.” It’s crazy. It’s super fun.

The people you meet as well as the owners of these businesses are like-minded people. That is truly inspiring. I’m now going to shift gears. Having been inspired, I’m now going to ask you ten rather silly questions. I hope that you haven’t seen these.

I have no idea what you are about to ask.

This is my quick-fire round. I did borrow these questions from someone else who is far more famous and successful than I am, but I did change a couple of words so I’ve made them entirely my own. Jon, are you ready for the quick-fire round?

I’m absolutely ready.

Question number one, what is your favorite word?

For whatever reason, onomatopoeia came into my head. I have no idea why.

You get the prize for the word with the most vowels in it. Everyone is going, “I’m going to have to put that in my notes. By the way, Jon’s word was onomatopoeia.” If anybody wants to know what that is, here’s a link to Webster’s dictionary. Number two, what is your least favorite word?

I hate can’t.

I was expecting something like floccinaucinihilipilification or something.

Won’t is a better word. Can’t is almost never right.

That’s the C-word, can’t. In other words, I don’t want to.

That usually means I don’t want to. It doesn’t mean I can’t.

It’s beyond the I can’t.

Some of that comes from being a dad. “I can’t take the trash out right now.”

Question number three, what are you most excited about?

I am most excited about my daughter, Gracie. She is a new homeowner and she happens to live in Sweden. I’m excited because the travel ban is gone and we are going to be able to visit her.

It’s a fantastic place. What turns you off?

The remnants of doom and gloom and the sky is falling. I get it. There was a lot of bad stuff. At the end of the day, from where I sit in the middle of the country in Kansas, this is a freaking awesome country. There is so much potential and opportunity. There is a bright side. There still is.

There is that real sense of bouncing back and overcome. Question number five, what sound or noise do you love?

My kids’ laughter. That is the best sound on the planet.

Particularly if they are laughing at your jokes as well, this is dubious. Question number six, what sound or noise do you hate?

That squeaky noise of either fingernails or chalk on a chalkboard for anybody that dates me back when I was in school. Just thinking about it makes my skin crawl.

It causes cold winds to brush. Question number seven, what is your favorite curse word? You may plead the fifth on this one if you wish.

I like a good F-bomb appropriately placed. That is my favorite.

It’s the greatest word ever invented. Question number eight, what profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

I always wanted to be a teacher. I’m not sure what grade. Way back when I thought high school, I’m not sure I would want to do high school, but I would like to try teaching of some sort.

Question number nine, what profession would you not like to attempt?

I don’t think I ever want to do anything in the medical arena. Not because I don’t like blood. It’s just that it’s hyper-regulated.

It’s not because of the engineering and all the liquid dynamics?

No. It’s not the science side of it at all. It feels so overregulated to me. That is what turns me off from it.

The final question, if heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?

I was a faithful steward of everything He trusted me with.

Jon, thank you for being an unintended victim, I mean a guest on the show. How do people get ahold of you and The Purple Guys? How do they find out how they can benefit from what is clearly a fabulous service?

Go to PurpleGuys.com. All of our contact info is out there. We are also on LinkedIn. We do have a Facebook page as well. Primarily PurpleGuys.com or our LinkedIn is Purple Guys.

I can guarantee that your phones will never have a dull moment. Jon, thank you so much. I can’t wait to stay in touch and follow your progress. I will be recommending The Purple Guys to everyone I come across.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Important links: 

• Purple Guys
• Hutchison Whampoa
• Purple Guys – LinkedIn
• Purple Guys – Facebook
• Purple Guys – Twitter
• Purple Guys – Instagram

About JON SCHRAM

Jon Schram is an IT support expert and the founder & CEO of The Purple Guys, a tech company that has grown since 2001 to become the Midwest’s premier provider of IT support services. The Purple Guys is a fast-growing, 7-digit business that has helped hundreds of companies grow by solving their IT problems and providing them with stress-free, bullet-proof tech support. Jon and his wife, Jill, have three children and have founded two businesses together.