Interviews at The Entrepreneur Center @NVTC

Bisnow on Business: So your dad was a military guy and not in business?
Yes, my father was an enlisted military guy in the Air Force. He played baseball in the Negro Leagues growing up. He had an opportunity to try out for a team in the major leagues but wasn't successful. He realized that he was making a lot less money than his white counterparts, so he lied about his age and enlisted in the service when he was 17.

What about your mom?
My mother had an 8th grade education and was one of the smartest, hardest working people. She just had a lot of moxie, common sense and street smarts. She basically did all the things she could do to raise us, from menial labor to finally working in the Senate documents room as the lead administrator for several senators and congressmen on Capitol Hill.

What were your interests growing up?
I was very interested in baseball partly because my dad was. Like with everything else, you try to find your own identity. I was also very interested in business. My mother tells this story about coming home one day from work when I was 9 and there were all these boxes of seeds for plants for Christmas cards and I was selling them throughout the neighborhood. And she wondered why any company would send a 9-year-old all this stuff. I also wanted to be an engineer and an astronaut.

Did anybody tell you what an entrepreneur was when you were younger?
No, not really. My grandfather was very bright. He had gone to a historically black college. He had a set of old engineering books that he gave to me when I was 7. The books had been written by some African American engineers and physicists but had never been published to the general public. I was really impressed by how well they were written. I can remember sitting on his lap and begging him to let me have them. That gave me the engineering bug. I think the entrepreneurship side is instinctive. When I was 14, I had decided that waiting in line for that $1.50 or whatever we would get for allowance back then didn't seem enough and I wanted to help my parents out. So I started a business called Hunt's General Services. It was basically lawn cutting and raking leaves and things like that. Within a month I had 17 accounts and I couldn't do all that work so I put a flyer up in my high school to see if anybody was interested in getting $10 per grass. The next month I had 45 or 50 accounts and I never cut another blade of grass. I made more money than I'd ever dreamed of by the time I was 17 years old.

What did a 17-year-old do with that kind of money?
I got an engineering scholarship so my education was paid for. My parents made sure I lived exactly like my brothers so every dime that I made in profit I had to put in the bank. So my idea of having a little extra money didn't really pan out. I was able to save some. I bought my parents a house and a car. I bought my first house with it. I put some money aside for future investments. It was like having 401(k) money taken out of your paycheck.

Are there certain attributes in sports that are useful in business?
I always played baseball and basketball growing up. I played in high school and college. I was drafted to play baseball and played minor league baseball before I tore a rotator cuff. In business what I learned from sports was discipline, dedication and commitment. Discipline in yourself to be the best you can be by putting in the work necessary to be successful. Dedication to the game and the love of the game and commitment to the teammates and a drive for excellence. And just the camaraderie. The thing I miss most about playing ball today is just the guys and the belief that this group of rag tag guys could go on and win a championship or do the impossible.

After you finished your education, what did you do?
I went into minor league baseball and ended up playing for two and a half years before I pitched too many innings. Growing up I was one of those kids who was a very good student who happened to be a decent athlete. I had to work really hard to be a very good athlete, whereas for my older brother, it came naturally to him. Academics came naturally to me. In the off-seasons I would always co-op. I did a co-op internship with IBM, knowing that there would be life after sports. When I retired from baseball, I went to work for a really small company but my biggest career move was in 1984 when I went to work for Booz Allen & Hamilton. I was able to come in as an entry-level consultant and move my way up to senior associate within about three years. That was a real fork in the road. I had done really well and was pretty young and making six figures and I thought I had the bull by the horns and discovered that I was too valuable to let go to another practice. My boss was in his late 30s and his boss was in his mid 40s so I was stuck. I spent a lot of time working with them, learning about business management, contract management and operations. I supported the battle force information systems practice. But I was very frustrated because at that time Booz Allen was strictly a management consulting firm. We did a bunch of great studies but then we would just leave them as paper weights for our clients and say good luck with the implementation. As an engineer you want to see your ideas come to fruition. I decided I wanted to steer my own ship. I left Booz and went to work for a minority-owned company called ISN Corp., in Bethesda to learn the ropes about marketing, business development and the SBA's 8(a) program. That's where I met my partner Scott Amey. In 1992, we said let's give this thing a try.

Did you finance the company with your own money or did you have investors?
We each had $5,000. We said let's put this to work for us. A friend of ours who owned a small business in Falls Church sublet us some office space for $450 a month. We just did it on our own. I'm really proud of the fact that all of our work has been grown organically.

Did you have anyone mentor you in the beginning or did you have to seek people out?
We pretty much had to seek people out. We were on untested ground. I'd never run a company before except for a lawn-cutting business when I was a kid. We never thought of ourselves as business owners. I was strong in marketing and business development and a somewhat affable customer relations guy. Scott was the best operations guy that I knew. So our motto was, "Rodney, you scare up the bears and I'll skin 'em." We thought of ourselves just as employees. It wasn't until we got to be about $12 million in 1997 that I started seeking out advice. I started thinking, "Wow, I'm actually running a $12 million enterprise." I started seeking advice from colleagues I knew who had run large businesses. People at Booz, SAIC and Lockheed Martin. And even people at smaller businesses and 8(a) graduates.

Was the government helpful in letting you know about opportunities for minorities?
The SBA 8(a) program is a very good program and I believe in it 100 percent. But the SBA doesn't have any money. So people think when they get their 8(a) certification that all this work is going to come their way. It's all about self marketing and having a vision and business approach that sets you apart, understanding performance-based contracting and then being able to convince the customer to give you an opportunity. Our approach was to say to our prospective customers: This is what we do. We believe our approach is unique and comprehensive and offers the best of management consulting and infusion of technology into your business process. And it's not agency-specific and not competency-specific. So if you select us, you're going to get well-rounded support and sustainable return-on-investment. And here is our small track record, back then anyway, of successes. If you select us and if the way to get to us is because we're an 8(a) company, well that's fine, but don't choose us because we're an 8(a) company. That's really a different approach than what many small businesses or 8(a) companies take. I don't know how many approach me now and say, "I want to be your protégé. Can you roll over all of your expiring 8(a) business to me and I'll be the prime and you be the sub."

If you could re-write the rules of these programs for minorities, what would you like to see?
I'd like to see there be a shorter window in the 8(a) program. It's a nine-year program and the first five years are developmental. I agree with that. But to get into the program, companies should have to identify a piece of business. The other thing I would do is, you have the developmental period and then the exit program where you have to learn how to live on your own outside of the program. So each year you had to have a percentage of your business be non 8(a). That's a great thing too because it weans you off the bottle. But then at the end of the nine years you're dropped off the face of the earth. You become a big fish in a pond for the last four years of the program and then after that you're a minnow in a large ocean competing against the Northrop Grummans and Lockheed Martins of the world. I would add a mid-tier set aside program.

What is your reaction when people give you awards for being a successful African American entrepreneur?
I'm torn. I'm flattered because it's important to recognize African Americans. But in the end I want to be recognized as a good business leader, period. What we've done with RS Information Systems is incredible to say the least and probably unprecedented in the industry whether we're a minority or not. A lot of people will look and say, "You had set aside programs to help build the foundation." That's not necessarily true. We graduated from this program with only 30 percent of our business being 8(a). This is a company that won a $450 million award with the Department of Energy competing against the largest of the large systems integrators. We won $130 million DARPA award beating out the likes of SAIC and EDS. Hopefully my colleagues out there recognize me as an outstanding business leader regardless of the color of my skin.

Who are your mentors today?
I have a very good friend named Jimmie Lee Solomon. He is the executive vice president for operations of Major League Baseball. He's a great mentor in that he has an unbiased view of the world. Bob Johnson is a huge mentor for me. I wish I could spend more time with him. He's one of the great hallmarks of success from BET all the way through to now RLJ Holdings and owner of the Charlotte Bobcats. I still think of my folks as mentors. When we started the business full time in 1993, my wife at the time - we had been married three years - was killed by a drunk driver. My son was 14-months-old. My mom and dad were right there for me. My mom retired and said, "I'm not going to raise your son but I will help you out. So when you get that call that he has a 100 degree temperature in daycare, I don't care if you're meeting with President Clinton, you need to get there." In life, a family support system is important for any successful businessman. For me it was critical. Now I have a beautiful 13-year-old son who's already 6 feet tall and wears a size 14 shoe and plays basketball. I can't quite get him to play baseball but he's a great student, gets As and Bs. I became mom and dad. I used to get all the Mother's Day cards. If there's a silver lining in this, it helped me to become more of a man that understands that life isn't easy and the trials and tribulations of single parents, especially single mothers, are difficult. So our company benefits are very structured to focus on making sure the family members of our employees have everything they need.

Do you pinch himself now when you realize how far you've come?
When I started this company I never envisioned that we would have the kind of success that we enjoy today. I wake up everyday and I don't think of myself as president, chairman and CEO of RSIS. I think of myself as an employee and I have a job. It really is an enterprise that I'm fortunate enough to be head of.