Milton Bartley's ImageQuest: Serving People Before Profit

Speaker 2 (00:00.108)

Hey, Nashvilleans, welcome to the You Matter Nashville podcast, the place where every story we share is a celebration of you, the heartbeat of our community. I'm Jason Hoover, delighted to be one half of your hosting duo.

And I'm Mindy Hoover, joining you alongside Jason to bring you the stories of inspiring individuals and unsung heroes making a positive impact right here in our hometown.

Every episode is about passions, dreams, and actions that stitch together the Middle Tennessee community.

So if you're looking to get inspired by the good happening around us, or if you want to hear from the change makers who believe, just like us, that you matter, then hit that follow button on your favorite podcast platform.

And if you are looking to make a move in the middle Tennessee area, Mindy and I are real estate professionals and would be honored to serve you with excellence.

Speaker 3 (00:45.228)

Now let's dive into another episode of You Matter Nashville.

Speaker 2 (00:52.77)

Welcome back to You Matter Nashville, where we sit down with local heroes that are making a positive impact in our community. I'm Jason Hoover, along with my wife, Mindy Hoover, and we are sitting down today with another special guest. Milton Bartley is the founder and CEO of ImageQuest, which is a Nashville-based IT service company. They specialize in a multitude of different things, sort of like cybersecurity, cloud solutions.

and many other things, but don't worry. We're not talking about IT solutions on this podcast for a whole different show. It's above my pay grade. And so I love that there are people like Milton out in the world that can actually take care of that for all of us. So Milton, thank you for joining us today. It's a pleasure to have you on this show.

Well Jason, thank you so much for having me here and I get plenty of opportunities to talk about IT and technology so it's actually a welcome change for me today to talk about something else maybe a little closer to my heart.

Absolutely. Now, Milton, just to share with our audience, Milton, he has a business that we talked about, what it makes him special is that he felt the need to give back. he, Milton, you have given back in huge ways, but you also

you also bless your employees. I, when we talked earlier, I love that, because so many times people get in this, I don't know this routine of, just got to get up, go to work, make money, come home. But, that's not how you run your business. you truly, cherish your employees. You truly believe that, you know, that together we are all better.

Speaker 1 (02:44.79)

Yeah, I completely agree with that. Thank you for saying that. So saying that my team hears me.

utter a lot is one plus one doesn't equal two in our world. And that's why I use it for lots of different ways. One of the ways is when we talk about people working in the office versus working from home, it doesn't mean we don't ever have people work at their home or work remotely. We all do it from time to time, but we get so much more from each other when we're sitting beside each other. We can look over each other's shoulder, can work together, learn from each other, commune with each other, take a meal with each other, have a coffee break, tell jokes, whatever that is. And it's hard to do that over

or a Zoom or a Teams meeting. But also just, truly believe, and I learned this from my very early days in the military, that it takes every one of us to make this happen. And if I'm doing my job right, really I'm the least important person on the team. And I mean that sincerely. I know it's my name at the top of the masthead, and I'm the one that a lot of my clients recognize.

you know, hey, it's Milton did this or Milton's company did that. But the reality is, know, there's, there's 48 other people that sit beside and around me that make that happen every day. And I want to make sure they feel that. And I want to make sure that they get rewarded for

You know, and unfortunately, I, I think you're unique. Yeah. Whereas I wished it wasn't the case. You know, I know we've all had our fair share of, not the best bosses. Maybe, you know, we, win or learn. So you learn what not to do. So you're, you know, those that you employ from what we've heard is they're very blessed to have you leading them.

Speaker 1 (04:21.454)

I appreciate that. learned that lesson, by the way, probably through lots of different ways, you know, having parents who both ran businesses and seeing how they treated their employees. So I got to experience that firsthand. Just being around people in general, the military certainly beats that into you in a good way that it's team, right? Not one individual can do anything. It takes all of us to do our job and each of us doing our job together often to achieve the mission. But I'll just say, like, I still remember this very well when I was...

senior in college, I was going out for a position in ROTC, military, quasi-military position, and I was in the final interview and I had been in Desert Storm so I had served as an enlisted soldier. One of the questions that I got asked was tell me, and it was a general officer that asked me the question, General Stan Musser, and he asked, tell me about an example in leadership that you've learned, and I wasn't expecting the question, at least not the way he asked it.

On the spur of the moment, my answer came to me and it was, hey, I learned this lesson by watching someone for whom I worked that didn't do things the way I would do them. And so I talked about this Colonel, I won't say his name on the podcast, but a Colonel that I worked for in Desert Shield and Desert Storm and in Germany before and after that, and how he treated everyone around him, especially the junior officers that were under his command. And...

how that elicited probably the wrong things from those people. And I used that example and I really kind of went in the weeds on that example. And I was not, by the way, expecting to actually get the position. I was just expecting to get the interview experience and I was selected for that role and the general told me about a week later that it was that answer to that question that got me the job.

wow. That's fantastic. So how long were you in the military?

Speaker 1 (06:11.662)

I spent five and a half years in the military and I spent some of that time as an enlisted soldier and some of that time as an officer. So I had kind of a dual career. I went to college straight out of high school, immature, not ready for college. I can see that now. didn't see that then, right? I was 18 going on 40. And then after my sophomore year, with not bad grades, but certainly not good grades, the only thing I liked about school was ROTC. And so when I got home,

for that summer after my sophomore year. I remember this so well. sat down with my dad at his office and I told him, said, I think I'm going to join the army. And my dad, not a violent man at all, almost came across the desk at me. And I remember this to this day. said, son, he goes, you know, if you don't finish college now, you'll never finish. He goes, and I have a plan for my life. And my plan includes you finishing college in four years.

back and running this business.

Something like that. so, well, you know, what a 20-year-old know-it-all is going to do. I walked out of his office and I literally went to the recruiting depot. literally left his office and went to the recruiting depot and enlisted in the Army. And I can never go back and ask my dad. My dad died a few years after that. what I challenged myself with often was that reverse psychology. Did he know me well enough to know that if he had said, yeah, it's a good idea, think he should go to the Army?

I'd have been like, whoa, second guessing. And instead he sent me right to the recruiting depot, which was exactly what I needed. So I mean, I joined the army. went to infantry school. I learned how to jump out of perfectly good airplanes. I ended up serving in Germany, Desert Shield, Desert Storm. I got promoted to Sergeant at a fairly young age. And I was actually out for a run one day. I was at Fort Hood, Texas. This is after Desert Storm. And I was out for a run.

Speaker 1 (08:04.406)

And a gentleman comes running past me and I've gone to Virginia Tech, by the way. And so I see a Virginia Tech sweatshirt running towards me. And so as we pass, I just yelled, Hokies. Well, then there's this voice, soldier. So whatever. no. What have I done? God calls me over. Turns out he was my brigade commander, Colonel Joseph Edge. So we have a little, you know, two minute interlude while we're both out for a run. What's your Virginia Tech connection? Who do you know? What class? All that. I took off on my run again, never thought about it again. About a month later.

I get called to the brigade commander's office, this long since forgotten. And my dad was ill, so I'm thinking, this is the call. I'm going to the brigade commander's office to be told my father's passed. And that wasn't it. I walk in and Colonel Inge, sitting at his desk, has my military folder in front of him and he says, Sergeant Bartley, said, I've been checking out your folder, I see you've got 63 credit hours at Virginia Tech. Yes, sir. You ever heard of a program called Green to Gold? No, sir.

said, well, Green to Gold's a program where we take promising young non-commissioned officers who'd have at least 60 credit hours of college credit, and we send them back to college to complete their degree and accept a commission as a second lieutenant. Are you interested? And I don't remember exactly what happened. This is 1992, right? But I vaguely recall something along the cliche of, know, can I have some time to think about it, and him saying something like, yes, you've got 30 seconds. It wasn't exactly that.

Jammer!

Exactly. So all that to say I accepted that, went back to Virginia Tech on an Army scholarship, completed my degree, served as a member of the Corps of Cadets there, took a commission, went back in the Army. Colonel Eng actually came to my commissioning and was at my commissioning, which was pretty neat. He was class of 69, by the way, at Virginia Tech. Went on to be a three-star general, had a great career.

Speaker 1 (09:58.338)

you know, just that turning point moment. it was just literally a guy wearing a Virginia Tech sweatshirt on a run and me being a smarty pants as I usually am and

It's a divine appointment.

Exactly. So I went back in as a lieutenant, served in the Army as an officer, was an armor officer, did some other fun things. And then I got out and started my career in technology.

Now, I know you had shared with us personally that, you yeah, you went to the military. That's really affected your business, but it's also affected your, just the florentherpes side of you as well, and in things that you support. I'd love for you to talk more about that.

Yeah, absolutely, Mindy, thank you. So, you my wife and I both, I would say, are very patriotic, as many people are, but we certainly have an affinity for the military, for first responders, for anyone who serves others. That just really touches our heart. So we are personal supporters of Tunnels to Towers and have been for many, many years. So we give annually to Tunnels to Towers from our personal accounts. there's another organization.

Speaker 1 (11:05.826)

that's here in Tennessee, it's called Reboot Recovery. It's actually started at Fort Campbell, a very interesting story. So Evan and his wife started this organization and she is and was, or was and is, I guess is the proper way to say it, a trauma expert who deals with soldiers who are coming back from overseas, specifically Afghanistan, Iraq, who had had traumatic issues, were dealing with brain injury, were trying to deal with.

the aftermath of seeing their fellow soldiers hurt, maimed, or killed. And she started this really amazing practice. And then out of that practice grew this whole organization called Reboot Recovery. And essentially they teach trauma treatment and re-inculcation into your society. And it's a train the trainer program. So essentially they do these programs all over the country now.

where they'll go into an organization, whether it's a church, whether it's a school, whether it's just a local community, and they'll put on these organizational trainings and they train others to then lead their own group. So essentially you go through the program, you graduate from the program, you are healed through this or you start your healing journey, and then you, if you feel so called, then become a leader of a group and you start your own group and it of expands and it's really amazing. thousands, tens of thousands of people they've been able to.

touch and serve through this program. And it's really, it's a suicide prevention, if you want to think of it that way. That's not their main thing, but that's a big piece of it, right? Is putting these people on a path to discovery and healing to avoid suicide. And they've expanded that now to not just military, but first responders, know, whether you're police, whether you're fire. It's really just, it's an amazing organization. So our company, ImageQuest, we sponsored them with a monthly

stipend for years now and then Sarah and I also give personally and others that are involved with ImageQuest also give and matter of fact one of our co-founders serves on the board.

Speaker 3 (13:11.672)

So is it almost like a group therapy kind of setting, kind like an AA, but for people with trauma issues?

very much. That's a great way to put it. Yeah, it's more than that. That's exactly what it is.

than that.

But I love that it's not putting a bandaid on it. It looks like it's getting to the core and fixing it.

100 % and so again she's a neuro, I don't know if I'm going state what her role is, but I think she's a neuropsychologist and so there's science in this that's gone into building this curriculum and this program that takes us through. It's not just sit in the room and talk about your feelings, that's important, but there's also science involved in the way the brain works and the way you retrain the brain and way especially if you've been through a brain injury, you get the...

Speaker 2 (13:56.878)

Yeah. And I love that we are learning more and more about our own brain and how it functions. I know, you know, we probably only understand a fraction about our brain, but, you know, I believe that one day that we'll understand it enough that we can correct people with these like neurofeedback or, know, whatever that next, next, next generation of it is because

I'm pretty fascinated by what Elon Musk, and don't think politically here one way the other, but what he's doing with Neuralink. If I'm reading correctly and understanding when they talk about it, I think they are on the verge of a breakthrough of being able to bypass spinal cord injuries with nerve regeneration and essentially allow people who have...

lost use of limbs and lower extremities to be able to regain that. I think that's a realistic near-term miracle we're about to see.

That'd be beautiful.

Yeah, we're in a very interesting time for sure with like using like the neurofeedback and being able to heal the brain, you know, and then, you know, just the AI robotics for the spinal cord injuries that are just so delicate. mean, it's we're in a really amazing time. It's moving very fast. So, yeah, I mean, and I know you probably nerd out on that side, like you nerd out on the neurofeedback and just that we both read a lot of books when it comes to emotional healing and how the brain works. It's just there's so much we don't know.

Speaker 1 (15:29.611)

I agree.

So that's just one of the organizations that you impact. Who else do you work with?

Yeah, so, you know, my wife and I support several organizations and we can come back to that, but I'll talk about ImageQuest for a minute. So one of the things that happened with ImageQuest, and it's a funny story. you know, we were, before we were truly a technology company, the way we think of it today with AI and cybersecurity and managed IT services, we were an office equipment dealer. That's how I got my smart. So we would sell and service copy machines. And then we migrated into

technology, know, as copy machines became more sophisticated, you would connect them to a network and get in the weeds on that. But one of the customers that we got, I want to say it happened in 2012, could have been 2011, was an organization called High Hopes. It's the High Hopes Development Center here in Franklin. one of my outside salespeople went out and, you know, made a sale and sold a copy machine or leased a copy machine. And so I was out one day in the Brentwood Franklin area.

and I just happened to drive by their event office, which was over on Mallory Lane, and I saw the sign and I had never been in there and I knew they were a client. So I literally said, I'll stop and introduce myself. So I did. So I stopped, parked, go inside, introduced myself to the woman at the front desk. She said, well, let me go get our executive director, Gail. They bring Gail out. Gail and I met and spoke for a few minutes and she said, well, would you like a tour? And I'm like, well, sure, absolutely. I'd love to see a tour. And so she takes me on a tour of the facility and we see.

Speaker 1 (17:05.496)

know a couple of the classrooms where these children are working and if you know anything about high hopes you'll know that they're a joint therapy and school so the therapy center will come back to you but in the school they have a very interesting model where they have children with intellectual and physical disabilities and what they would call typically developing children in the same classroom with the same teachers learning side by side from a very early age.

It's a phenomenal program. So she takes me to the school, I see a couple of classrooms, and then she takes me over to the therapy center where they're offering, you know, feeding therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy to all these children of all ages from, you know, birth basically all the way up to 18 years of age. And I'm watching this and it's fascinating just to watch these kids and these therapists just having this amazing time. And it just, almost is like a little miracle factory when you watch it. So I'm seeing all this for the first time.

And I leave and then Gail has my information and so I leave and go on about my day. And again, I don't remember 13 years ago exactly the timeline, but let's just say within a week, I get a phone call or an email from Gail and she's like, hey, great to have you in last week, really appreciate what you guys do for us. Would you consider joining our advisory board? I go, well, tell me more. And so she did and I joined the advisory board. So I come on the advisory board and I'm serving on the advisory board and we start to learn.

as I start to learn I should say, that they have some IT needs. Their IT is being provided by think a friend of a parent of one of the kids that gets served there, kind of a pro bono fashion and he does it ad hoc. And I'm like, well, we're starting this IT practice. We've got actually a developing IT practice. Maybe we could help. And then Gail reminded me, well, if you're on the board, we'd have a problem getting this approved. That could be a conflict of interest. And I said, did I just get hoodwinked here?

I think you did. So long story short, we started donating our services to them at that time. And we've been donating our services ever since. They've since moved into a phenomenal new facility in Franklin. They've expanded that facility. They've done some amazing things. And so they have close to 100 employees between the therapist, teachers, teaching assistants, administrative staff. They run a full-time operation.

Speaker 1 (19:26.586)

They're there all the time, they're serving kids, they're HIPAA regulated healthcare company, if you want to think of it that way. They have an EMR just like you would at a physical physician's office. So they have some fairly sophisticated needs and ImageQuest provides all of that for them. And if you were to put math to it, it's a $22,000 to $25,000 a month cost if they were paying for that service that we're donating to them.

It hasn't always been that, but that's what it is today. We donate that to them every month. We provide those services 100 % free of charge. The only thing they do buy their hardware when they need to buy something like computers and things like that, but a lot of times they use grant money. We help them apply for those grants or fulfill those grants and we sell it to them at our cost. But all the services are provided to them free of charge and have been and will be for the foreseeable future. And we feel really good about that. Our team all knows that.

but nobody treats them differently, right? They don't call our service desk and get treated, you're the pro bono, we'll put you over here. No, they get treated just like anyone else would get treated. And it's a phenomenal relationship. I went on to serve on the board. I left the advisory board and served on the board for six years. And the last two years of those, I was the president of the board of directors. And still, I've been off that board now for three years, but still very close to my heart, what we do with.

Yeah, I love that you don't just give the money you dive into it.

Yeah, it's, you know, it's a, I would say it's a passion that's overstating it. I don't want to make it sound like I'm completely altruistic in that way, but I get excited about it. I like to see things work. I like to see broken things get put back together again and work in a more efficient way. That's sort of what makes me tick. And so when I see an organization like that, especially if I'm sitting on the board or near the board in that example, and I know that it could be done better and I know that we can help with that.

Speaker 1 (21:18.424)

You know, I was passionate about making that happen.

I love that. And we need about 10 more of those in the middle Tennessee. It's just so, so needed, you know, high hopes is, and it's like, but it takes, like you said, it takes so many people to make it successful. And depending on people like you that are donating services all around or at a huge discount in order to make it work.

Yeah, they're a pretty phenomenal organization. And then the new president who just, I think, literally assumed the role earlier this month, Ricky Scott, he's a longtime friend of mine, served on the advisory board when I was on the board, has helped put on fundraising events for the organization for years now. His wife is actually a therapist at the school. And then Alan Long, who became the executive director when Gail retired a couple of years ago. They've got a huge mission and...

they, to your point, there are a lot more kids that need that service than there are seats available to provide it. So to your point, we could use some more of those.

you

Speaker 2 (22:22.134)

Yes, we had Alan Long on our show not too long ago, yeah, very, very good guy. so those that are listening, that's another great episode to go listen to and learn more about what they are doing, because it's it's it is phenomenal. Now, the other takeaway from that story is Gail is brilliant.

Right.

That was brilliant!

We'll never know. We'll never.

that's amazing. No, it's in, you know, the services get costly and you providing that, you know, out of the kindness of your heart. It is, it doesn't just help that one bit. You're impacting so many families. Yeah, it goes way beyond just, you know, just high hopes. The kids, their, their parents, their sibling. mean, you.

Speaker 2 (23:23.03)

are helping impact all of them.

Well, that's very fair. You know, when I sat on the board, was obviously, well, I mean, we're all privy to their financials if we want to go look it up because it's a nonprofit, we can go request it. But I was very privy to the financials. And so I understand what that, you know, call it 250 to $300,000 a year savings goes towards, right? If they had to pay that bill to us or someone else, you know, that's 250 to $300,000 more they would have to go raise just to be at break even.

to continue their mission or is $250,000 to $300,000 worth of services they wouldn't be able to provide to your point to children or families. And so I get it, it makes a difference. mean, that's simple math. That's probably four to six full-time employees at that organization.

yeah, I see. Yeah, that's all.

So.

Speaker 1 (24:15.138)

We're happy to do it. And again, we don't feel it, right? It's not like we sit around at the end of the month at ImageQuest and go, my gosh, if only we could send that bill to HiHo. We don't feel that financially at ImageQuest. It's just, part of what we do every.

business expense.

I love it. All right, so other than high hopes, who else are you guys working with?

Yeah, great. I mentioned Reboot Recovery, so that's not an IT support perspective. That's just truly financial support, you know, making a financial donation on a monthly basis. Another one, this is an interesting one. one of our bigger clients is a bank here in Nashville. I won't mention the bank by name, but it's a large Nashville-based bank. And I was sitting with the COO one day, and he said, hey, he goes, I've got a friend.

who's having a fundraiser for her nonprofit, would you and Sarah like to come? And it's a wine tasting and neither Sarah nor I drink. we're like, Sarah's not gonna wanna go to a wine tasting, but I'll gladly go and just hang out with you. So I went with my friend Larry and his wife, Libby, and went to this event and I got to meet the executive director, her name is Tash Weddle, of this organization called The New Beginnings Center. And that was my exposure to it, this wine tasting hour long event.

Speaker 1 (25:38.286)

pressed some flesh, met a few people I knew, met a few new faces, met Tash, and that was it, went home. And like a month later, Larry calls me and says, hey, would you do me a favor? And Larry, as I said, is the CEO of my client, so I'll work with him on a pretty regular basis, we do their IT, and he said, hey, remember meeting Tash? And I said, I do, he goes, I gotta tell you, goes, you know, that tiny little operation, way too small for ImageQuest, he said, but would you do me a favor? Would you call her? She's having a real struggle with her IT provider.

And I said, what kind of struggle? He said, just let her explain it you. I said, okay. So I called her, talked to her for about five minutes and said, hey, how about if I just come over and see you? And her office is over off of 8th Avenue. So I just went over in Berry Farms. I just drove over and sat down with her and started talking to her. And sure enough, like it's very small, like five computers in the building, you know, just a tiny little operation from an IT perspective.

And she starts telling me what her problem is. And the more I listened and she told me what she was paying, it was like, you she was paying $1,500 a month or something for this little IT company to help her, which to her was a lot of money to her organization. And she wasn't getting very good support. They weren't able to answer her questions. Let's not get into the why behind the way, but bottom line is they weren't having a good experience and they weren't speaking the same language. And so I looked at what she needed and I literally thought, my gosh, this is like, if we do X, Y, and Z, this is.

so simple to fix for her and then just it just works and then it's very easy to support. And so I left there I said hey I'm gonna call you back by tomorrow we'll figure this out. So I called Larry I said Larry I said we're just gonna do this for her and he goes well he goes he literally offered to pay for it. literally paid for it for my time. I said Larry no you don't need to pay for anything. I said this is such a this is such a non-event in the grand scheme of things we would never take a client this size that was a paying client they're too small.

but for us to just fix it for her. We'll just do it. And so, and we did it. And that was, I can't even think how long ago, I want to say this was in 2019. I know it was before COVID. I just know that specifically, but anyway, that's the new beginning center. They're a wonderful organization with a great mission. Tash started this organization. They essentially provide, I'm going to call it, I'm going to butcher this and she'll watch this and go, you described this all wrong. They provide lifestyle training for women.

Speaker 1 (27:57.666)

who are caught up in what I would call a repetitive cycle of bad decisions about your personal health and how you feed yourself and feed your family and feed your children. And so essentially, they take these women that are usually overweight, some of them morbidly obese, that don't understand how to get out of this cycle. Like they've tried every diet under the sun, they've tried whatever that may be, and what they don't know is that it's deeper than that.

sometimes emotional, we don't think of that piece of it, but a lot of it is they've never learned what a portion is, they've never learned how to read the ingredients on a box of food. And I say never learned, it's not that these people are ignorant, it's just that no one's ever taught them that. They've just never been exposed to that. know, hey, this is what the TV commercial said, I bought it, it was on the store shelf, and I cooked it and I ate it, right? And so essentially they teach these women how to read and understand the ingredients, how to...

understand portion control, and then how to do physical exercise. So Tasha's background is she was a college athlete and then an athletic trainer for organizations like I think Purdue and certainly Vanderbilt and others before she started this nonprofit. And then they get corporate sponsors to basically pay the scholarships for these women to come to this program. And it's a regimented multi-week program where they go through, learn to get portion control, they learn how to shop, how to read the ingredients, but they learn how to work out, how to sweat.

how to get in there and throw up weights. You can think how that could be intimidating to a woman who's never done this before, but it's done in, gonna hate this term, but it's in a safe way, a safe space. It's all women, right? It's women trainers for the most part. It's other women in the organization. It's other women that are the constituents, and you're working in this amazing gym that is like college, athletic, professional athletic quality and caliber equipment and space.

and they go through this amazing program and they come out the other side better equipped to handle themselves, better equipped to pass on this knowledge to their next generation because a lot of them as I said are caught up in this systemic multi-generational issue where my grandmother was this way, my mother was this way, I'm this way and now I've got kids. So anyway, I got to learn a lot about the mission and the process and as I said, I think it was 2019 we started this and we still support them to this day, love them to death, they're a great little client of ours, I call them a client.

Speaker 1 (30:20.728)

we treat them just as if they were a pain client.

I'd love to have them on.

Yeah, I was here.

Yeah, you Tash would be great on here. She's fantastic. And she's got a lot of really high power and support behind her around the

That's really great. I just love niche nonprofits that saw the need and fixed it, you know, or try to find a way to put some solutions out there. I respect that a lot.

Speaker 2 (30:47.19)

So outside of helping organizations, one thing that I mentioned at the beginning was about how you treat your employees. So I'd love to talk a little bit about that if you're willing.

Yeah, absolutely. Do have a specific question or do just want me to kind talk?

No, some of the, you know, one of the things that you shared with me was that, you know, when we talked briefly was about, you know, renting an office. Yeah, so yeah, I will butcher it. So you go right ahead.

Yeah, okay. I know which one you're

Speaker 1 (31:23.662)

Oh great, I'll tell this story, this is a fun story. So we have our main offices in Nashville, Tennessee and it is over by the airport, it's really at the intersection of Donaldson and Harding Pike. So there's a big office park there and that's where we've been since 2016. Before that we were at the other end of the runway over off of Brownlee Parkway, but that's where our main office is. And then we opened up the office where I'm sitting in Franklin three years ago this month.

This is more of an executive retreat. As we outgrew the space over off of Donaldson Pike, we needed some more office space. So we took some office space here in this nice office building. So in this office building on the sixth floor of this building is a multipurpose space. It's actually the Williamson Inc., which is the Chamber of Commerce for Williamson County. It's their space, but anyone in the building can actually use the space free of charge if you sign up for it. And so we've had meetings and trainings there, but we've also had our Christmas party there a couple of times.

Two years ago, we were having our Christmas party up on the sixth floor, and we had decided that year, and we've done this different ways each year, but we had decided that it was not gonna be a plus one party. It was gonna be an employee-only event, you know, starting at five o'clock, a nice dinner, have a little presentation, get everybody out of there by eight o'clock, and get them on their way home. And so we're upstairs getting ready. It's about 4.45, and the very first people to get off the elevator and come down the hall is one of our newest employees at the time. He'd been there less than six months.

and his, I will say, eight month pregnant wife in her beautiful maternity Christmas dress that she had very clearly bought for the occasion. And here they come down the hall to our non plus one party and I'm like, oh my gosh. And so I walked up immediately, graciously welcomed them and then I just said, hey, just as an FY, you this was not a plus one event, no issue that you're here, but I want to make you know so you don't feel uncomfortable.

Well, she could not have been the more perfect person to mistakenly show up at this party. She was five foot nothing, 120 pounds, soaking wet and pregnant. But she's a prosecutor. Hickman County, Tennessee, and never met a stranger and not afraid of anybody. She's in court all day, you know, dealing with all types of folks, you know, whether it's, you know, drunk driving, domestic violence, you name the crazy stuff that she's had to deal with.

Speaker 1 (33:48.928)

and dealing with other attorneys. So anyway, I just struck up an immediate conversation where I fell in love with this woman from a perspective of just listening to her tell stories and got to know her for like 15 or 20 minutes as other people started to show up. And in the course of the evening, so this gentleman that's her husband, his brother also had recently joined our team. So we had two of them working for us, the two family members working for us, and she made a comment. She said, hey, you these guys must really like working for you.

Otherwise they'd never make that drive every day. And they live out in the Dixon area. So as I mentioned, I said, yeah, I said, I know that's a long drive. It's like 45 minutes. And she said, oh no, it's an hour and a half. And I'm like, well, yeah, I get it. know, round trip hour and a half. She goes, no, no, it's an hour and a half each way. And I'm like, what? She said, yeah, these guys are carpooling and there's four of them, by the way, her husband, his brother, and two others that they all knew that all had come to join us in the previous year. And she says, oh yeah, that's an hour and a half each way. so I wasn't going to argue with this woman.

especially a prosecuting attorney. I'm going to lose that argument. you know, we went on the conversation, but later in the evening after the party, I'm like, well, I'm going to fact check this. So I go check it. And sure enough, yeah, the drive is with traffic in the morning and in the evening and commutes the way they are. And we're in Nashville. It's an hour, hour, hour, 20 minutes, hour and half each way. And I'm like, holy moly. I mean, these are not

paying jobs, but these are not super high paying jobs. These aren't the kind of jobs that you drive three hours for every day. And there aren't too many of those jobs that I'm aware of, but they exist. And so said, holy moly, I said, we've got four of these folks that are making this drive every day. There is no way we're going to keep these folks long term with this type of commute. So I called the manager who was one of those four and I said, hey, we got to put an office in Dixon. He's like, what? I said,

We got to put an office in Dixon for your team so that we have a place for them to go to work. It's not an hour and a half drive each way every day. And so that was a week before Christmas, two weeks before Christmas. And within three months, maybe a little less, we had found an office in downtown Dixon, gotten it outfitted, gotten it set up. And we have that office to this day. Matter of fact, we've grown it to the point we've already had to increase the size of it and move up a floor in that building to take on more space.

Speaker 1 (36:14.382)

I want to say we have eight to ten people that go to work in that office every day now. And so, full circle, come back full circle, the manager that helped me put all this together, who had actually recruited a lot of these folks from his personal life out in Dixon, a couple of folks from church, some other people he knew, he sat me down at the Christmas party a year later, same upstairs on the sixth floor here, and he said, he goes, I just want to tell you about all the things that I got to do with my family in the last year.

because we opened an office in Dixon. starts listing Wednesday night dinner at church, soft baseball games with his kids, soccer games with his kids. I don't remember all the specifics, but he had this list of things that he got to participate in because he lives and works in the same community now and not an hour and half away.

impactful. That is very impactful. You know those moments you can never get back. Spending it with your kids, family, you what have you. And for you to make that step, that showed them that you cared enough.

Yeah.

Yeah, and again, I told you this and I'll say it again, I mean, I'm a nice guy and I get that, but I'm not 100 % altruistic. There's a business savvy there if you think about it. know, our rent in Dixon and the technology costs in that facility, whatever that monthly cost is, is far less than the cost of replacing just one employee who quit because of this. And so we've now...

Speaker 1 (37:47.724)

done a couple of things, right? We've kept those good employees that we wanted to keep, made their quality of life better. But we've also made it possible for us to now recruit and hire in a different town in Tennessee that offers a different level of talent, that offers them a lifestyle that they want and still be able to work in a high-tech industry, but maybe live out of McHugh in Tennessee or wherever they want to live in Tennessee and not feel like they have to drive to Nashville every day or find a job where they can work from

which isn't for everyone.

right. It's taken outside the box for sure. Yeah.

So when you hire, are there certain characteristics that you're looking for that will fit into your organization?

Well, great question. Yeah, so I would say there are several very specific ones. So we have some core values that we look at and do you match our core values where we do the right thing, we do it with professionalism, we do it with teamwork. So we think about, are you gonna fit those core values? We do some other things, some testing to make sure you really can fit the role specifically.

Speaker 1 (39:02.616)

But you know what we've said oftentimes, and this goes way before I had ImageQuest 18 years ago, this kind of goes back to my post-army days, my first job in management. You know, I can pretty much take someone that has an aptitude and an attitude of wanting to do it and teach them how to do the job. That's not true of every job, Like you're not gonna hire a surgeon that hasn't gone to medical school, I get it. But you know, in our world,

You know, we want folks in certain roles that have that technical experience, that technical schooling, that technical background. But more so, we want people that have the right attitude. This gets overused, but you have a servant's heart. know, so one of our sayings in ImageQuest is we passionately serve others. So it's a motto, for lack of a better term. And so we want people that want to passionately serve others internally and externally. We actually had a meeting yesterday

employees articulated that you we want to passionately serve our internal customers as well as our external customers and I loved hearing him say that. for the boss to say it but it's even better when somebody else says it and means it when they say it. So we're looking for people that have again that servant's heart that want to help other people as part of their career as part of what they do every day and it doesn't mean that we're all going to you know strap on our backpacks and

Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 1 (40:25.39)

you know, go hike down the highway and pick up litter every day. That's not what we're talking about. Or, you know, go over and, you know, work at the food bank, you know, every weekend. That's great if that's what you want. But really I'm looking for someone that just has more of an attitude of it's not always about me and I get fulfillment by seeing other people get what they want out of life. And if I can help them get that, then I'm fulfilled as well.

And I would venture to bet that you don't have a lot of turnover.

No, that's a very fair guess. We don't have a lot of turnover at all. mean, it happens from time to time. Obviously, people get other opportunities. They get an opportunity to move or a spouse does. But no, I mean, we hire well. We train well. We're getting even better at that with our training program and certifications that we're doing for our team members to better them in their career space, whether they're at ImageQuest or somewhere else in the future. And we treat each other like family.

And I think that can get overlooked sometimes and it can also be stated but not lived in some organizations. But I do really feel like we treat each other a lot like family, which means I can pick on you but nobody else better because I'm not right. And we live that here. We do.

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:40.578)

You know, everybody says, we have culture. Well, yes, everybody does. Doesn't mean it's good.

Fair statement. No, and it's, you know, there's no one thing I've done, like there's no magic Milton button that I pushed one day and gave us this great culture, but you know, I learned as I told them that earlier story with General Mustard, I've learned by watching what people do that doesn't work and I'm a good mimic sometimes, so they would say, good artists borrow, great artists steal.

And so I'm the same way with ideas. If I see someone doing something at their company that works, I might borrow it or steal it. I'll give you the other example, something that one of my banking clients did that I just fell in love with and borrowed and then stole. They give a trip, well, we now give a trip. Every five years that you work at Imagegress, we send you on a $5,000 vacation. And you have to use it for a vacation. And we gross it up for taxes so you get the true value of that $5,000.

And we've we want people to do something that they would never probably do on their own if they had to pay for it out of their own pocketbook and we've had folks go to take their husband on an old region cruise and go all around the Baltic Sea and the North Sea We've had people go to Japan with their spouse and take their grandmother who's from Japan and go on a 10-day trip through Japan We've had folks go on Disney cruises and take their whole family and extended family We've had folks take I had one woman take her all of her college

sorority sisters not all of them but her group of sorority sisters and go to Aruba for a week and all you know she paid for all of it and just some other really neat things that we've been able to watch people do and it's fun to see that it's fun for them to go on these trips and then come back and tell us all about it and put pictures out on our team's channel so we can all see what they did on their vacation.

Speaker 2 (43:31.342)

You know, I, uh, I think I missed it. I would love to work at that place when I was starting out. I, um, I, I got a, uh, on my five year, I got a cup of coffee and, on my 10 year, I gave him a notice. Oh, may well, um, you know, employee. So, you know,

Right.

Speaker 3 (43:53.88)

Good grief.

Speaker 2 (44:00.194)

Coming full circle here, blessing your employees and treating them with respect and valuing what they bring, that gives back as a whole to the company. And also that actually, I'm sure helps you give back to the community as well, because I know it costs a lot to hire and train employees. And when you have, it's almost...

It's almost a synergy in a way. You have that culture built in and you live it every day. so it, you know, you've created something that is, you know, I would even say it's almost like a model of how to run a successful business, but also how to impact your own community in such a very positive way.

Yeah.

Well, I appreciate you saying that and I do think that's fair. We've got a great team here. We've hired great folks. I've got a core group of people that have been with me for a couple of them, you know, more than 10 years. And, know, in this day and age, that's not that common. And I've got a couple of really good leaders. One that's kind of grown up here.

Yeah, that's rare.

Speaker 1 (45:21.098)

and become a leader inside the organization, one we brought in from the outside that had those chops. I mean, we've got others, but I just think about, know, it's consistent. It's not just me doing it and saying it. Matter of fact, it would never work if it was that. It's others learning that, that come from that same, that have that servant's heart. Again, they come in wanting to help others do well and excel. There's obviously healthy competition here for certain things, you know.

promotions, recognition, things like that. But at the end of the day, we're really all trying to do the same thing, which is take care of our customers and have fun doing it and be paid well for that. It's kind of that simple at the end

Yeah, yeah. So, you outside of that, you are a speaker as well, correct?

I am. Yes.

Is it for IT or what type of topic?

Speaker 1 (46:20.536)

Well, my team will laugh and say I'm a wind-up doll, give me a topic in five minutes and I'll get on stage and do it. But there's some truth to that. But really it is in a couple of major themes. So cybersecurity, I'm obviously, I'm going to use the term expert. won't put it in air quotes, but you can do that. I'm an expert in cybersecurity and in certain areas I absolutely am, especially when it comes to like banking regulations and banking cybersecurity and regulatory oversight.

So that's one where I speak often at banking conferences and other things. But really more what I would call, I use the term emerging technology, but to put more of a fine point on it and be less arcane is artificial intelligence. I'm a big believer in artificial intelligence, where it's going to take us, where it's already taking us. We are early adopters.

especially for an organization our size for implementing it, but also bringing it to our customers in a safe and secure way. And so I speak often about artificial intelligence and really business use case, artificial intelligence, regulatory compliant artificial intelligence. So that's an area you'll find me, whether it's a banking conference or a legal conference or just a group of civic leaders who want to speak her, I do that often.

So knowing that, do have a question for you. I read something the other day that said, you know, they're estimating and I don't know, it may have been, you know, just a guess or, you know, they're just wanting readers, but they said, we are approximately 18 months away from singularity.

Yeah, so I don't know the answer to that, nor does anyone else, frankly, because I think those guesses or those estimates range from something like 18 months to, hey, it's really 2050, right? And I heard an interesting podcast just in the last week that talked about how far away we are from really being there where you're have the emotional intelligence required for a true singularity.

Speaker 1 (48:33.954)

You've got the intelligence piece, whether it's artificial or not, but they have emotional intelligence, being able to read the room, read the individual, read the situation. Again, are we 18 months away? I don't

That singularity in itself worries me.

Thank you.

Yeah, it is interesting. read something, I don't want to get too far down the rabbit hole on this podcast with you, but I'll get a little bit. I just saw this this weekend and validated it yesterday. Anthropic, which is one of the major providers of large language models, they have a new model out. They have their Claude version 4, and they have 4 Sonnet and then 4 Opus. I believe it's the Opus model that did this, where the Opus model in training, they were trying to...

test its limits essentially. And so they gave it fake training data about a company that it worked for or was working with. I think I'm getting this right. And essentially as part of that fake training data, they had email conversations that it was privy to between some of the engineers that had talked about one of the engineers having an extramarital affair. again, it's all made up for training purposes. And then they went to make a change to the model and wanted to change out the model for a different model.

Speaker 1 (49:50.186)

and the model blackmailed the engineer and threatened to release the information about his extramarital affair if he changed out the model. So there's a little dose of singularity for that. I think this is legitimate. don't think this is not a made up story. This is legitimately something that happened through the training of this model. They obviously didn't send the model out into the wild like that.

No.

Speaker 2 (50:05.581)

No!

Speaker 3 (50:18.956)

Go J-

the capabilities that are there with these things without proper guardrails.

Everest security is going to be, I mean, a growing field and you're going to be competing against that and with that.

Right. Well, you think about, again, I'm not calling AI psychopath, but I think if we look at, what is the definition of a true psychopath? So a psychopath has no conscience, right? A psychopath, there's no guardrails on your actions. You have all, we all have all these capabilities as human beings, but we have guardrails on our actions and emotions, right? Yes. Wrong and right. you build artificial intelligence and it has all these capabilities, but you don't build in the emotional guardrails. Well, you've basically built a psychopath.

Right.

Speaker 1 (51:03.118)

It's.

haven't thought about that. That is scary. Well now I'm terrified. How about-

There you go.

You've really taken this thing on a dark turn.

You

Speaker 2 (51:14.038)

man, this is, yeah, this is getting into some scary, dark places. But, you know, we got to live and love and cherish what we have at the moment. Well, Milton, I appreciate you, sir. And, you know, one thing, too, I appreciate your service. My father served in the Air Force and, you know, he

well.

Speaker 2 (51:42.254)

You know, he'd shared, you know, different memories and things. And there's some pictures of my dad back when he was in the air force. You talking about skinny? mean, he was probably 120 pounds soaking wet back then. but, you know, I had also had looked at going into the army as well and considering air force. And that's a topic for a whole other thing, but I came, I came that close from joining. And, but I didn't. And here I am.

Outstanding.

But I do appreciate your service and I appreciate everybody that has served because there is a lot of sacrifice. A of sacrifice that we don't comprehend if you're not.

Well, my good friend Cory is a retired three-star general from the Air Force and he has two daughters at the Air Force Academy, one of whom graduates tomorrow. So tomorrow's Air Force Academy graduation.

That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (52:34.348)

That is fantastic. Well, I appreciate you sharing the story and, most importantly, I appreciate what you do and how you give back to the community because you don't have to. And you do it because you want to. And that means so much. You don't do it for, you know, tax credits and anything of that nature. I'm sure it probably helps a little bit, but that's not, you know,

that definitely doesn't play into why you do it. Your heart definitely shines through and I appreciate all that you do to help these organizations because they're impacting others and there is a cost involved in all of it as you very well know and you're helping them. But also on the other side is you're not just blessing those outside the company, you're blessing those that are in your company. And that goes even further because

that spreads to their families, their kids, they're getting to spend time with their children, which is, we all know that, you know, an absent father, absent mother impacts a child's development greatly. So thank you for what you do, sir.

Thank

Thank you for saying so. You're very welcome.

Speaker 2 (53:49.386)

All right. Well, all right, everybody. So that is a wrap on today's episode. Hope you enjoyed it just as much as we did. And if you are looking for IT services, I know a guy and but all seriousness, please look it up. Your website is imagequest.com. that correct? So look up his company if you're in the market for anything like that. But also just remember that

That is correct.

Speaker 2 (54:19.714)

We all matter. We do. Our voice matters. What we do matters. The people in our community matters. And you don't have to have a nonprofit to make a difference. You can be a business owner. You can be an employee at a business. You can do things to impact this community in a very positive way. All you have to do is step out and do it. So thank you for listening. And until next time, take care and God bless.

And that brings us to the end of another episode of You Matter Nashville.

We hope today's show has left you feeling as uplifted and inspired as we are. Remember, the spirit of Nashville lives in all of us and every small act of kindness echoes throughout the community.

A huge thank you for listening and even being a part of our YouMatter community. If you love this episode, please share with friends and leave us a five-star review. It helps us reach more listeners and spread the love.

And if you know anyone that is looking to make a move to Middle Tennessee area, we are real estate professionals known as the Hoover team, and we would be honored to serve them with excellence.

Speaker 2 (55:21.824)

Until next time, keep making the difference Nashville. You matter more than you know.