They've been together for literally a lifetime, and they're using their relationship to help redefine how they do business.
Jim and Andy Hackett, a father-and-son duo that runs one Andover- and one Woburn-based TeamLogic IT tech support franchise, say their connection to each other has driven their business into unprecedented growth they hope will only continue.
"A family business has its pros and cons," said Andy Hackett, who lives in Stoneham and is vice president of sales for his dad's two franchises. "In certain family dynamics, it can work really well or it can not work, and I think we work really well because of the mutual respect we have for each other."
Jim Hackett, franchise owner and a Blueberry Circle resident who admittedly knows nothing about computers, said his son — a salesman at heart — was the perfect person for his business when he hired him almost five years ago.
"We were slowly launching the business, and I decided that we needed a full-time sales professional," the father said. "We just sort of talked a little bit about the potential of working together. As a father and son, we have a great relationship, so we had to look at it and say, 'Can we carry this great relationship into the business and have that work to our advantage, or could the pressure of working together impact our relationship negatively?'"
Since then, they haven't looked back.
"He can do things faster than I can think of them," Jim Hackett said. "It's an inaudible joy to know every day that you're working with your son. You have an opportunity to share years of business experience with him, and he has the energy and expertise to do more with it than I could ever do."
The expertise that Jim has, Andy said, is how to run a tech business from the standpoint that relying on tech support can be an awful experience.
"He hates IT support. He hates the way technicians talk to him," Andy Hackett said. "Being a non-technical business owner, he shaped our services around what he always wanted."
The business, which caters to providing tech support to small businesses with 1 to 100 computers, benefits from the structure Jim gave the franchise, according to Andy Hackett. This is highlighted in the fact that most of their customers expect so much out of customer service, but at the same time expect that they will receive so little support.
"There's a lot of comfort that (customers get from us) when they find out I work with my dad, that we're a family business. We're not going anywhere," said Andy Hackett.
With a total of 67 locations throughout North America, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, TeamLogic IT's founder recently highlighted Jim and Andy's franchises as being among the fastest-growing franchises in the entire company.
The growth is expected to continue, according to Jim Hackett.
While saying that the company drives to "under-promise and over-deliver" — a guarantee that they'll complete a specific service by a given time, only to exceed expectations on that guarantee — Jim Hackett said their current goal is "to increase our revenue ten-fold within the next five years, and we're on track for that."
But that was an under-promise, he said with a laugh, and they're expecting to over-deliver — together.
