Our next featured local entrepreneur started off his career in IT by fixing computers for friends and family.

That eventually led to the creation of the cybersecurity and IT company.

ARK Solvers, which stands for attentive, reliable, and knowledgeable, and was named the fastest growing IT company in South Florida three years in a row.

Joining me now to share more is Reginald Andre, founder and CEO of ARK Solvers Inc. And he goes by Andre.

Andre, welcome.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's great to have you here.

Talk a little bit about this interest in computers.

This came at a young age and then it really kicked off with something that happened in high school.

So let's talk a little bit about that.

Yeah, so I was in high school and the one of the computer technicians for the school, he was overwhelmed and they decided to create an elective where they would have the 11 and 12th graders basically follow him.

And from there, he just started teaching us computers and that's where my love started.

Amazing.

So from there you ended up working at Comp USA, right?

And then you went into business.

So talk a little bit about that.

Yeah, so I was about 21 years old.

I was going to school to become an English teacher, and here I am at Comp USA.

And one day this guy comes in and he buys all of these things, shopping cart after shopping cart after shopping cart full of items.

What was he getting?

Just laptops, computers, TVs, wifi, everything.

Yeah.

And at the end of the sale he says, "I have no idea who how to set this up."

And I said, "I can do it."

You know, I would always help my friends and family.

And from there he gave me his address and I went to his home to get everything started.

So this is really just a hobby that you had no idea was gonna turn into a career, right?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I was supposed to be an English teacher right Now.

Imagine that.

So then lead us to ARK Solvers.

Yeah, so here we have nine years.

I'm working with this guy and everything is going well.

We have eight employees, we're over a million in sales and my business card says managing partner.

My email address says Vice president.

But I didn't have any partnership actually.

Like, so I went to him and I was like, can I have something in writing?

And he asked me, he said, okay, sure, gimme a couple of of months, I'll have the attorney draft up something.

A couple of months later, he calls me to his office and he says, Andre, I'm sorry, but I'm gonna have to let you go.

Wow.

That's what I said.

And I couldn't believe it.

Here I am, nine years, seven days a week, 18 hours a day, sweating and building this company.

And he lets me go and I am am in the garage.

I have my twoyearold son, I have a mortgage, I just got a house and what am I gonna do?

And I remembered a quote by Rocky that says, it's not how hard you get hit, it's how you get back up.

And from there I said, you know what, I can do this myself.

I had a noncompete, so I couldn't go after the old customers.

And then that later in that day, I created ARK Solvers.

That same day you said, I'm gonna do this.

I'm gonna do it myself.

I had no choice.

Isn't that something?

Sometimes that's how these things happen, right?

You have no choice.

Yes.

You have to pick yourself up and start over.

Let's talk about funding.

That's something we've talked about throughout this program.

How did you get started?

Because I've read, you said you had a hundred dollars in the bank account to start ARK Solvers.

Yeah.

Yeah, so that was really your seed money right there.

That Was it.

That's it.

A hundred dollars.

So here I am when I, when I got laid off, essentially fired and I was making a lot of money, but this is 2009.

It was rock and roll back then.

You didn't keep anything.

And with a hundred dollars, I basically took some postcards, went to Kinko's and just started knocking on doors, starting knocking on business doors to try to just get new business.

So lived in my mom's room and just had to go back to the basics.

Wow.

So talk about growing your business.

Once you started AEK Solvers, you're starting to see that you're doing well, then what's the next step to actually growing the business?

It was scaling.

Scaling has been the next part and one of the toughest parts because you no longer had to be it.

You had to now trust people to now do what you're, you know, what needed to be done in the business.

So that was the next step.

I had to get a COO and this is all bootstrapped, this is no venture seed money.

This is no credit cards, no line of credit.

So if I didn't have the money, I could not hire.

Yeah.

You've talked about that, that you've seen your business grow slowly and you've done that on purpose because you did not want to go into debt.

Talk a little bit more about that because a lot of people too, we live in an age where people want instant success, right?

They see an overnight millionaire, an overnight YouTuber, whatever the case might be, but you were slow and steady.

That has to take a lot of discipline.

Slow and steady runs into the race.

So I follow Dave Ramsey and one of the things that he does, he teaches is being debt free.

So I'm debt free in my business, I'm debt free personal.

And I think that really helped because in my previous business, when we, you know, got the money, we would buy new floors and put the big signs up and things like that.

And it was unnecessary.

But I knew by just having the cash, just using whatever was in your debit card would be the best way in order to grow the business and have it be sustainable.

So that if we did have any type of crashes or anything like that, we weren't overextending ourselves.

One of the things I've heard you say too was that there was a lot of failure along the way, but you learned from those failures.

And you don't want people to be afraid of failing.

To not try, you're gonna fail, but try and do it anyway.

Right.

Talk about what you've learned from those failures.

I fail every day and I tell my employees, if you're not failing, you're not learning, you're not growing.

And that is so important for me that I tell 'em, try, make a mistake.

It's okay to do that because otherwise how else you're gonna learn.

So we have a policy in our company and sometimes our techs do oops moments.

But it's okay.

We, we train on it, they learn.

The entire team learns and then we move on from it.

You sound like a good boss.

Thank you.

Allowing your employees to fail and saying that's okay.

Let's go back to, you said you wanted to be an English teacher, you went to Broward College.

You have two associate degrees from Broward College, One's in business, one's in tech.

Talk a little bit about that education and you're on their foundation now, Broward College Foundation.

Right.

Talk about how important that education was to you.

And some people think, you know, you have to go get a four year degree somewhere in order to start a successful business and that's not necessarily the case, right.

The reason I wanted to become an English teacher originally was supposed to be computer science, but then I was going to go to a university, but my GPA was too low.

And from there I decided to go to Broward College.

My mom is Haitian American, first generation Haitian American, and education is important for any Haitian mother out there.

And from there, Broward College really, really accepted me.

And you're absolutely right, you don't need a four year degree.

You can go and get an 18 month certificate program at your local college and you come out making 60,000 a year.

But unfortunately, and especially in my community, they don't know that.

Talk a little bit quickly about work/life balance.

How do you make it work?

My wife is big on me on that, so it's, it's really about delegating.

That's been the biggest thing is that I don't have to do everything.

And I have a great COO, I have a great team and I let go and I just trust, and that goes back to failing and if they made a mistake, we learn from it.

But letting go and not having to be in every single step of a project, that's been great for the work/life balance.

What's your advice to budding entrepreneurs?

Slow and steady wins the race.

And you can do it with the money that's in your pocket.

No excuses.

You can do it.

You can do it.

That'll be the last word.

Andre, thank you so much for being here.

It was great having you.

Thank you so much as well.