Nidal Allis CEO of Techno Rescue, which is a veteran-owned, full life-cycle green IT company based in Colorado, specializing in computer electronics, recycling, data destruction, e-waste disposal, computer service and repair, IT support, and consulting.
Not just computers-
- Medical equipment, have them refurbished, recertified, and remarketed to other medical facilities, whether they’re in this country or aboard, that cannot afford brand new medical equipment.
Earth Month
- We brought in probably somewhere in between 400,000 and 500,000 pounds. And most of that was in the last two and a half weeks of the month during Earth Week.
Guinness Book of World Records
- We do an event with 9News, and this year we’re doing it on September 9th at Coors Field. Last year in a five-hour period we picked up 378,000 pounds in five hours. So much so that this year the Guinness Book of World Records is going to come out because that is a world record for the most amount of recyclable material of electronics in a one-day period.
Vision and round the clock
- I can envision us in a year, year and a half from now being a 24-hour operation just to keep up with the growing volume
- I was in the shower and I had the vision. I jumped out of the shower before the soap got out of my head, I called my soon-to-be partner, and within two hours we met for lunch. I went to the Secretary of State, I got licensed, two weeks later found a warehouse and got busy
Success and control-
- The first year we profited and that was against all odds, as you know as a businessman. The second year at Techno Rescue we profited, and again that was against all odds. And then, being the young entrepreneur, I think I got a little ahead of myself, started expanding, had multiple locations, and I decided I’m going to go after some of the big million-dollar contracts and accounts. And I’ll accept my accountability, I lost control of it a bit
Embezzlement and Cancer
- The third year I experienced an embezzlement. So the second embezzlement of my life, the first one in D.C., then this one with my own company. Had a lot of problems with employees. At that same exact time my mom got diagnosed with cancer.
- So I decided to fight. Shut all the different locations down, got reorganized, I terminated both partner relationships. It was a very expensive experience.
- I have a Ph.D. in the hard-knock class of business learning.
Rebuilding-
- Difficult because I had zero dollars and massive debt that I took on by myself, especially when I kicked out my cofounder. He wanted to sue me, but luckily, even though we had a high school relationship, I was smart enough to have an operating agreement an attorney drafted at the beginning.
Advice
- You had two opportunities to look at embezzlement, if you were going to take and start another business today and you were going to have partners, what procedures or policies would you put in place where everybody would know that there’s accountability and oversight? What would you do?
- I’d do is I’d make sure that my partner had a vested interest and not going to walk in with just sweat equity. They need something to lose,
- Part of the operating agreement was that I’d be the primary to manage all the books. But he wanted to run it because I was a better business development person than he was. So I should have kept my hands on...
