In late December of 2011, I incorporated HITO Management in anticipation of developing and selling FlipBook, our first spatial-based scheduling solution. Amber strategically planned our wedding for June 2012 during my week home rotation. As a contingency, our honeymoon was delayed until August, only to have a full-time gig at BP Whiting offered to me. Since it started in July, I couldn’t accept it, so I recommended a friend. They promised me two other permanent jobs for later that summer, but they never made the final offer and ghosted me. That sealed my decision to stick with HITO. Luckily, at BP, they needed more help after the Honeymoon, so when Jim Voss called back, I was able to join the project as the “HITMAN” from HITO Management.
We formed HITO with the intention of being a solution/product-first type of consulting company. We expanded upon FlipBook with SiteWalker. In 2014, Mr. Voss recommended us to Jason Steph at Price Gregory. Kerry Karvas allowed me to bring Brandon into the profession, and we spent the next couple years working side by side for the next three years…all while developing FlipBook and SiteWalker. With only two of us, we had a project booked for 2018 that fell thru. Ready to launch but without any consulting revenue, SiteWalker lost its advertising budget. We redirected our efforts towards consulting, and were able to increase our staff to five. On March 11, 2020, I gasped at the tickers scrolling across the airport TVs while traveling home from Grupo Gondi’s Monterrey Paper mill. Even with the Shutdown that followed, we have been very blessed not to have any Pandemic related layoffs.
When we started, our spatial products defined us as a “different” type of consulting company. Not only was my vision of scheduling different, my ideas of what an employer should be were different-much different than the two companies that made promises that weren’t kept. While I’m proud of the numbers that go with growth, the people and promises are what matter.
HITO staff is growing, and this growth is causing us to transition not just by doing different things, but by being different people. We are pausing to take the time to plan and solicit ideas from our staff, because the best plans result when everyone in the room participates. After being in a couple rooms, not only do we want to engage everyone in the room, we want everyone in the room. We want diverse ideas and the people that have them. As we prepare our firm for the next 10 years, we want to be as engaged with our employees as we are with our projects.