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Founder, President and CEO

michael proper

Point of View By Breeann Berger

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Sometimes a story of triumph over great adversity crosses our path. Michael Proper’s story is too great to pass up. When he was only 10 years old, his mother dropped him off at a state-run daycare facility and didn’t come back. From there, Proper moved from foster home to foster home, struggling to understand his new reality as a young child. He was separated from his siblings and left to fend for himself on numerous occasions. Despite overwhelming circumstances, Proper found a love for life and learned to emulate the positive attributes and qualities found within different role models in his youth. When the state of California emancipated him at age 16, he found himself hitching a ride from Southern California to Payson, Utah. He survived on manual labor jobs ranging from digging trenches to carrying hod.

Now, more than 10 years later, Proper has launched DirectPointe (www.directpointe.com), a successful Information Technology Management company. As Founder, President and CEO of a company that has experienced over 200 percent growth each year since its inception in 2000, Proper has proven the possibility of overcoming the greatest of challenges.

These days, Proper visits local high schools to tell his amazing story and to give his lecture, coined the “Proper Perspective,” to ambitious young students. Five years ago, Proper was reunited with his mother and is now in contact with all his siblings. His forgiveness and grace are just a few of the qualities that have shaped his outstanding character.

connect was privileged to meet with Proper to recount his journey on the road to success. What we discovered was a family man filled with humility who is eager to give back to the community and to offer opportunity whenever possible.

connect: How has your background shaped your perspective?Michael Proper: If there’s anything I want to get across, it would be that we’re all equal. The only thing that separates us is the knowledge that we gain throughout our time on Earth, the decisions we make

with that knowledge and our underlying attitude towards life. When I was growing up, I went through a lot of different things related to turmoil. Some people look at it as a negative experience, but I was able to gain a lot of positive things from it. Early on, I realized that life is hard for everybody. I think that’s one of the things that prepared me to make the decisions I’ve made.

connect: Where did you get your background and experience with technology?MP: In 1991 I found myself in Payson, Utah living off manual labor jobs in pretty much every different industry. One day, it was just like a light came on. I found myself carrying cinderblocks to some masons. I stopped, looked at them and thought, “I do not want to live my life like this.”

Two weeks later I found myself in Colorado working with a guy who left Xerox and started his own business called Veritas Solutions. I was the first guy on board and I didn’t even know how to turn a computer on. Veritas Solutions was a consulting firm servicing small to medium sized businesses, implementing technology and applications. I worked with him for about two years, making peanuts, yet gaining an invaluable education about why and how companies use technology. From there, I wanted to come back to Utah. I went to work for a guy who owned a small technology business. I worked on a 100 percent commission basis. For every dollar of gross profit I made the company, I would make 20 cents. I was a young punk kid, but I found my self being able to understand what our customers’ needs were and found ways to solve them that created real value for our customers. The

customer base continued to grow. Over the next five years we grew the company from $100,000 in revenue to over $10 million with less than 12 employees.

connect: What made you decide to start DirectPointe?MP: I learned a lot from helping to grow the two previous companies. I had made a lot of money — for a young punk kid that is. For me, life is about doing the things I know I should be doing at the right time. I saw the market and I saw the model. Walking away from the previous company was hard for me because I spent five years helping to grow the business and could honestly say I grew to love my teammates and really enjoyed working with them. But I left because the DirectPointe business model had too much potential and needed to start from scratch — a fresh base. Standards,

centralization and economies of scale were a must if it was to be successful.

My wife and I made a conscious decision to invest a certain amount of time and money to build something and see it grow. From my perspective, this business was based on adding real long-term value. DirectPointe is a billion-dollar business.

connect: How was DirectPointe initially funded?MP: I started with my own savings. After that, every other month I would hire a management team member. Each one invested their own money — which is a big deal. It meant they were 100 percent committed. We ended up with a team that is personally invested and really cares about the company. After that, we found 10 angel investors and completed a $250,000 angel round in 2000.

Currently, I am still heavily involved

Having a caring team with members

in the right positions is what makes

the most sustainable difference when

starting and growing a company.

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in each hiring process and decision. We are up to 56 employees so far, and I am convinced it’s important that our employees are not only skilled and educated, but also that they truly care about the company and its customers. Having a caring team with members in the right positions is what makes the most sustainable difference when starting and growing a company.

connect: What services does DirectPointe offer its customers?MP: DirectPointe offers a full suite of managed computing services that can handle up to 100 percent of a company’s computing needs for a consistent monthly fee. Our primary offering is targeted at small and mid-sized businesses and includes all of the needed equipment, software, management and support. Our clients don’t have to spend large sums of money upfront to properly outfit their companies with the needed computing infrastructure or hire any IT staff members. We handle everything for them. What really makes us unique is that we provide one point of contact to prevent “finger pointing” between vendors, and everything is included in the client’s monthly fee. Service providers have traditionally sold their services based on billable hours. While this may have been the only feasible option in the past, it creates a potential conflict of interest with their clients. If a client encounters more problems, the service provider makes more money. What is the motivation to do it right the first time and minimize future problems? With our model, we have a common goal with our clients. We are very sensitive to our clients’ productivity and spend 3-5 weeks planning the deployment of our solutions. By planning in advance and completing much of the configuration work at our facilities, we minimize the impact of a change to a client’s computing environment. After the planning phase and configuring the environment, we deploy our solution over a weekend. Our clients can leave their offices on a Friday and come back on a Monday with all of their systems ready to go. We even migrate all of their data files to the new

systems. We enable our clients to have everything set up right the first time without having to make a significant investment upfront. We average all the costs, including the hardware, over a three-year period to make it as affordable as possible. The average fee is around $150 per user for our complete solution that provides all of the computer equipment, software, and services.

Large companies can afford to keep IT personnel on staff. Smaller companies, however, can’t justify the expense of just one internal IT employee let alone hire the multiple experts needed for the various areas of technology focus. At DirectPointe, you pay the same monthly fee and receive unlimited support from a full team of technology experts. If you have a problem, you push a button, type in your question and it routes to the most proficient technician. You get a faster response and resolution, 24 hours a day.

We have implemented very specific standards for all of our customers ranging from the installation, operating systems, hardware, software, virus protection, remote back-up, remote monitoring, messaging and security processes. This allows us to limit our knowledge base for faster problem resolution to ensure our clients are more productive than our competitors’ clients. It’s about standardization and centralization. We do it all from here. It’s like what Ford did with automobiles; the automobile had been invented and the need for individual transportation was there, but it wasn’t really affordable. Ford basically streamlined the process, used some structural processes and the best technology. That’s essentially what we’re doing to automate the way technology services are delivered. We believe our offering is a disruptive service in a new market. Currently, we are delivering the service in all 50 states and 7 countries.

connect: What kind of competition does DirectPointe have, and what makes DirectPointe better?MP: There are four other companies in the US that provide similar types of services. The way that we deliver the solution enables our customer

satisfaction levels to be higher than most companies that deliver IT types of services. Our average eSupport response time in 2004 was 18 seconds and the average time to resolution was about 27 minutes.

DirectPointe wants to be better than any other business in the world at one thing — managing the IT lifecycle. That’s what we’re in the business to do: quantify costs associated with managing the IT lifecycle. Our tools and systems are such that we can manage, protect, and support our customers remotely; utilizing centralization, standardization and economies of scale, we can manage IT better and cheaper than our clients can internally — with or without an existing IT staff.

connect: What are your future plans for DirectPointe?MP: Like I said before, this business is a billion-dollar business. We’ve had multiple offers to be acquired, which we have declined. It’s a matter of proper execution and delivery. Continuing to help build this business is my goal for the near future. In all reality, I see myself in this type of business for a long time. There will come a time when it will be right and the timing will make sense, at which point I’m sure DirectPointe will find some type of liquidity event for our shareholders.

connect: Do you have any words of wisdom for aspiring entrepreneurs?MP: You must learn to identify a problem and then solve it. A good entrepreneur should be a good leader and one who understands he or she serves those they lead. Surround yourself with smart, caring and dedicated teammates. Make sure that everyone is focused on the same goal and that there are simple ways to measure the progress toward that goal. Create balance in your life. Value your time. You never know when your time will run out. Devote yourself to continuing to gain knowledge and make wise decisions based upon the knowledge you gain. Use your mind — it is the secret to success! Always believe in yourself. Work hard and never give up! fin