Julian Hamood, President and founder of Trusted Tech Team, a leading provider of Microsoft licensing and cloud-based solutions launched in 2017, is celebrating the company’s ongoing meteoric growth by relocating to a 32,000+ sq. ft. office space to accommodate more in-house experts. Based in Orange County, CA, Trusted Tech Team recently announced that it surpassed its 2022 revenue goal by over $53 million under Hamood’s leadership — and now welcomes over 150 employees into its expanded footprint.
In the words of Hamood, “I’m proud of the impact we’ve been able to make on the North American market. We are growing faster than we ever could have anticipated. I remember when we were a small team of eight people only a few years ago with a vision of raising the bar when it comes to alleviating the biggest IT pain points. In just six years, we’ve been able to outperform all our competitors by continuously increasing the value we provide, and our high customer retention rate speaks to the efficiency of our model.”
Hamood helped differentiate Trusted Tech Team from the start by establishing unwavering standards of highly-specialized, round-the-clock, U.S.-based support and an unparalleled customer experience. The company’s core philosophy of prioritizing “human-to-human” interactions stands out amongst competitors who’d sooner outsource support tasks to overseas call centers. In addition, the company’s customer-centric approach continues to drive trust, loyalty, and success with its clients, each of whom can be confident that Hamood’s team will understand and solve their tech issues better than most anybody else in the business. The company has earned its Microsoft Gold Partner status (among other impressive accreditations) by remaining bullishly committed to these cornerstones of best-of-breed support, customer experience, and industry expertise.
As the world continues to shift around us, the insights of leaders who have fearlessly led their teams through the storm and come out on the other side not only alive, but thriving, are more valuable than ever. I had the pleasure of asking Hamood — a clear example of such leadership — to share some of those powerful growth insights that many of us can replicate in some fashion in our own lives.
Tell us a bit about your origin story. What inspired you to start your company?
Absolutely. I was working at a managed service provider (MSP) from 2014 – 2016 when I noticed a major gap in the market in terms of Microsoft licensing and the information that was available at the time in North America. In the two or three years I was there, I refined my technical expertise, leadership skills, and confidence that I could create a company of my own to cover most of the deficits I’d discovered in a more people-centric, elevated, and impactful way than I saw executed elsewhere in the industry. I launched Trusted Tech Team out of Irvine in 2017 with a radical new value-add business model that made us hugely successful within legacy (on-premise) Microsoft systems. Still, my team and I knew there was also a massive opportunity to be seized in servicing Cloud-based systems as more of the world transitioned their business to the Cloud. We chose to pivot our core focus away from supporting on-premise systems to Cloud-based solutions, which catapulted the company into a meteoric growth phase that hasn’t stalled yet.
Now your company has grown beyond even your wildest expectations. What do you believe is the reason for that?
Beyond that early decision to start focusing on the Cloud when so few of our competitors were, I’d say a lot of our success thus far has stemmed from how closely we focus on the quality of our in-house specialist talent and the quality of customer support we provide. The customer, the client, the human is at the center of absolutely everything Trusted Tech Team does, which is especially unique at a time when the human touch is being forfeited in favor of automation, crude efficiency, and cost-cutting measures. It goes back to what first inspired me to start the company: being able to execute faster than anyone else while keeping the customer at the forefront of the equation. Add to that our ongoing commitment to affordability — Walmart pricing with Nordstrom service, if you will — and you’ll see a bit of what set us up for success.
You seem to be a people person. Do you think that has also added to your success?
Definitely. By ‘people person,’ I’d say I’m just someone who truly prioritizes people. People over profit. Depending on the circumstance, people over product. As a business leader, I believe that if you have enough love to give your staff, your staff will have enough love to give your clients. And I think that perpetuates all the way down the chain, culminating in success from the ground up.
What do you believe sets you apart from your competitors? Is it how you treat customers? Or?
I think it’s a combination of all the above, along with the fact that prospective clients seem to respond well to our team’s extreme humility and rapid ability to adapt. From our own internal systems and protocols to those we support within the Microsoft ecosystem, we are always learning, adapting, solving, and making necessary changes almost instantaneously – which is very beneficial to the customer, both in terms of time and money. This real-time adaptability gives us the opportunity to grow, while many of our big competitors take at least 12 – 18 months to make the same changes.
I know there are times when people can get really frustrated with tech. Personally, I want to throw my computer out the window at least three times a week. How can you help someone like me?
We do therapy work here. (Laughs) But seriously, we have noticed this same sentiment shared at times by even our home clients who are just using Microsoft 365 to manage their work. While we serve clients that range over 1000-person enterprise organizations to remote teams with under 50 employees – at some point, they all get frustrated and don’t know where to look for a solution. They definitely try to throw their computer out the window, but it’s usually locked to their desk. To help ease those frustrations, we’ve hired some of the best tech experts in the world and made them readily available for any myriad of support issues around the clock, 24/7, right here in-house.
Amazing. I’ve heard that you do a lot of volunteer work for nonprofits. Can you tell us more about those organizations, and what inspired you to get involved in philanthropy?
I’m first generation Lebanese-American. My parents came to this country when they were 23 and 18 years old, and throughout my life, they helped me with some of the Thanksgiving volunteering events that were held in California. From a very young age, they taught me that if you have the resources to help people, you help them — whether that means offering your time, money, or both. Now that I’m busier than I could have ever planned to be, I consciously make time to volunteer my resources when and wherever I can.
As for the non-profit organizations and charitable causes we support: We want to help pave the path for future generations, and we believe that the best way to do so is to be proactive in setting them up for success now (rather than later). We’re involved with Project Youth OC, which aims to reach and uplift underserved youth in local communities and children with troubled backgrounds. Our employment is nearly entirely community-based, and we also have built a presence on the UCI campus to bring in students for part-time and full-time jobs. In our efforts to make a larger impact on our surrounding communities here in Orange County, we’ve also been making recurring donations to Wounded Warrior and Project Youth OC.
Wonderful. So, tell us, where do you see your company five years from now?
We just expanded our office space and staff to fill a whopping 32,000+ sq. ft. here in the States, and we’re growing in Europe, as well. We have already established our presence in London and plan to expand into Germany and France soon. Over the next five years or so, I believe we’ll cover a much larger portion of the global footprint when it comes to Microsoft licensing solutions and Cloud-based offerings. We’re also working to develop some custom app solutions, which will be revealed in due time. Stay tuned!