Between the Lines: Craig & Adam’s Excellent Adventures

Last week I wrote about all the interviews I conduct over the course of a week. This week I’d like to share a couple of recent stand outs. The first took place back in June when I interviewed Craig Knouf, president of Imagine Solutions in Portland, OR, for the Dealer Spotlight in ENX. You can read that here.

Craig Knouf

Knouf has been in the industry for ages, and after a brief hiatus he’s back doing what he does best, running an office technology dealership. Actually, doing what he does best is running successful businesses. I loved the fact that after leaving the document imaging business a few years ago he ended up opening a gourmet burger restaurant in Portland before an opportunity to return to the document imaging business brought him out of the frying pan and back into the fire. He’s got a great story to tell.

Another recent interview was Adam Gregory of Advanced Business Solutions, a small independent dealership that operates out of Atlanta, Georgia and St. Johns, Florida. His interview will appear in the September issue of ENX. I was introduced to Gregory while reading his Elite Dealer nomination form.

Adam Gregory

Gregory is a relative newcomer to the document imaging industry. He started out in 1999 when he went to work for a small independent dealer in Marietta, GA. In 2004 he started his own dealership, except he didn’t follow the traditional game plan that virtually everyone else in this industry adheres to. Instead, he created a virtual dealership with no brick and mortar location. Everyone works from their homes.

After starting the business in the Atlanta market he expanded into Florida last year. He’s still small with only five employees, but he’s figured out how to service customers not only in Georgia and Florida, but other locations around the country. It’s a fascinating story, but you’ll have to wait until September to read it.

There’s a lot of interesting people in this industry with fascinating stories to share. Some of these people I know, some I’m just being introduced to thanks in large part to the Elite Dealer nominations that are slowly but surely coming in. By the way, the deadline for completed Elite Dealer nomination forms is Sept. 1. That’s less than a month away. Simply click on the logo below to access the form.

Meanwhile, if you’ve got an interesting story to tell and I haven’t interviewed you before for either the Dealer Spotlight in ENX or the many articles I write, I’d love to hear from you. Just send me an e-mail.

Thanks for reading.