“Each year we were prac­ti­cal­ly dou­bling rev­enue. We con­tin­ued this trend for the first ten years,” Black­burn said. By 2005, the pair had already grown the com­pa­ny to eight employ­ees. With the grow­ing suc­cess, the com­pa­ny opened the new divi­sion Tech­si­co Enter­prise Solu­tions that same year. In laymen’s terms for those of us who are techie defi­cient, this divi­sion worked with the low volt­age side of tech­nol­o­gy. It tar­get­ed busi­ness­es that were in need of inter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty. It worked with the car­ri­ers of inter­net providers and the busi­ness­es them­selves to bring com­pa­nies into the mod­ern age of web com­merce. This tech­nol­o­gy includ­ed fiber optics, voice and data sys­tems, wire­less access points, busi­ness secu­ri­ty, fire alarm sys­tems, audio and visu­al, set­ting up servers and net­works, trou­bleshoot­ing and remote desk­top sup­port. Three years lat­er in 2008, the com­pa­ny acquired its first com­peti­tor Pil­lar Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Fol­low­ing this, the com­pa­ny took six more com­peti­tors under its con­trol.

As tech­nol­o­gy evolved, the wiz­ards at Tech­si­co kicked off Tow­ers Unlim­it­ed in 2010. The com­pa­ny looked toward the sky and began build­ing, updat­ing and repair­ing cell phone tow­ers. Think back to the stone-age for a minute, and you may remem­ber 1G technology…oh the hor­ror! Techis­co is the com­pa­ny that con­tin­u­al­ly brings us out of those dark ages. Each update from 1G to 2G, then 3G to 4G to LTE to the lat­est 5G tech­nol­o­gy hap­pens through the efforts of those behind the cur­tain. Although the tow­er remains viable, the oth­er com­po­nents such as radios and anten­nas must be changed to accept the new tech­nol­o­gy. With this new feath­er in the com­pa­ny cap, the part­ners’ suc­cess kept gain­ing momen­tum and grow­ing along­side the tech­nol­o­gy it pro­vid­ed.

“One of the rea­sons we have been suc­cess­ful is we’re big on if we say we will do it, we will do it. And if we miss some­thing, we don’t go back after the cus­tomer with change orders,” Black­burn said. He added that they offer top tal­ent and don’t “nick­el and dime” the cus­tomer. Also, they meet their com­mit­ments, which dri­ves good reten­tion, he said.

“One of the oth­er things I believe attrib­ut­es to our suc­cess is that nei­ther one of us own­ers take out of the com­pa­ny. We pay our­selves a salary and leave the prof­its to rein­vest in the com­pa­ny con­tin­u­ing to build it. We have left the major­i­ty of the prof­its in the com­pa­ny,” Black­burn explained.

It takes heart, courage, and brains to build a suc­cess­ful dream. Black­burn and Lytal did this…and they were already home when they began their jour­ney down the yel­low brick road and over the rain­bow to suc­cess.

“To be hon­est, every time we would move to a new build­ing, in my head I thought, this will last us a long time, and we will be able to grow. Even with the first 900 square foot build­ing, I thought oh we have room for four or five employ­ees, and this space is going to take us five years in the future. It didn’t. It last­ed one or two years. Each year I say well we’re prob­a­bly as big as we are going to get and two years down the road were grow­ing even larg­er. It nev­er ceas­es to amaze me,” Black­burn said. Fol­low­ing his busi­ness suc­cess in Okla­homa, Black­burn has recent­ly decid­ed to bring his skills and insight into pol­i­tics. He has recent­ly thrown his hat into the polit­i­cal ring by run­ning for Dis­trict 77 in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

As the Wiz­ard of Oz said, “Pay no atten­tion to the man behind the cur­tain.” Most of us prob­a­bly don’t pay atten­tion to what is going on behind the cur­tain. We sim­ply push a but­ton, strike a key or type a text and mag­i­cal things hap­pen that con­nects us to one anoth­er and our world. Per­haps, just this once though, we rec­og­nize the great wiz­ards behind the cur­tain who keep us all on our very own yel­low brick road to suc­cess.