The year was 1985. Ronald Reagan was president, just starting his second term in office. In the movie theaters, Michael J. Fox was thrilling audiences in Back to the Future. Everyone had a Walkman with the latest cassettes from Madonna and Michael Jackson.
The computer revolution was in its infancy. Windows 1.0 had just been released. The Commodore 64 was very popular at home, and the first Nintendo came out that year. IBM PCs and clones dominated the market, but a little company called Apple had been making headway, releasing the Apple II and the first Macintosh in the early 80s. And a young man by the name of Rich Coulombre was about to find a hobby and passion that would turn into a multi-decade business helping make technology productive..
The Support Group celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. The entire company is flying to Vegas to celebrate the occasion. While there, we sat down with Rich to learn about the inception of The Support Group back in 1985 and the company’s history over the last four decades.
The son of an engineer, Rich was fascinated with technology from a young age, working with early IBM 1130s at Boston Latin School, and learning Fortran and Assembler. After a stint working at Xerox, he was hired as a tech support technician for Apple in 1984, working with Apple II’s, Apple III’s, Macs, the LISA and Apple’s newest Laser Printer. It was there that some of the philosophy that is the bedrock of The Support Group started to form.
Rich recalled:
“At Apple, we could always make the argument that we were doing the right thing, even if it cost more money. And ultimately, we would be supported for doing the right thing for the customer. I always liked that.”
In mid-1985, the writing was on the wall at Apple. Steve Jobs was publicly feuding with Apple’s management. In the summer of 1985, the company laid off 1,200 people — including Rich and his co-workers. Instead of jumping back into a new job at another company, Rich and a couple of friends decided to strike out on their own. Rich and his partner approached local dealers — who they knew from doing tech support — with a simple pitch.
Rich remembered:
“No one else was offering training at the time. Intro to Mac, Intro to Word, that sort of thing — no one was doing it. So our first business plan was: we knew all the local dealers, so that was our starting point.
We went to them and said, “ Do you want to offer training?” We set up a deal with them. They provided the customers and the location, we provided the service and the training materials, and we split the revenue.”
The relationships that Rich and his partner had with the dealers provided the start for the company — building good relationships with customers would remain a fundamental value for the fledgling company throughout the next 40 years.
With every training, the business grew. After attending a training, customers would come to Rich’s new company asking for more help — for consultation on projects. And The Support Group was happy to help. Their customer base soon expanded beyond the local dealership to local companies and, of course, in the Boston area, there were some very large Apple consumers: colleges and universities. TSG started doing training at numerous well known colleges and universities, and other educational institutions in the area.
Rich said:
“One day, the head of a training department from a local university called me out of the blue. She explained that they’d been getting a flood of requests for FileMaker training and asked if I knew anything about it.
Without missing a beat, I said, ‘Of course — what do you need?’ She told me they were looking to set up a class. I agreed, hung up the phone, and then immediately called Mac PC Connection to order a copy of FileMaker.”
That was the first time Rich and TSG had encountered FileMaker, yet it would change the course of the company. This was FileMaker version 1.0. As FileMaker was new, there were few resources available for learning. The classes were all created from scratch by Rich. Reaching out to the product manager of FileMaker about this, Rich found himself being offered a new opportunity.
Rich recalled the product manager agreeing,
“My management has been telling me they’re hearing the same thing through the sales channels. So they actually gave me some money to get a book written. Do you want to write it?”
Rich had never written a book before, and unlike many of the other challenges, was a bit daunted by the prospect. He wasn’t a writer. But he knew the product. He sat down and started writing notes about what he knew and how to do things in FileMaker. A week and 50 pages of handwritten notes later, he had the beginnings of a book. Together with experienced technical writer Jonathan Price, they turned those notes into a comprehensive guide to FileMaker 2, Rich’s first book.
The rest is, as they say, history. Rich went on to write more books, present at many conferences, and provide training on FileMaker throughout the world. The Support Group became one of the first official partners with FileMaker. Throughout all of this, the relationships he built expanded the business. Customers would find out about TSG through a training, or a presentation, and then ask TSG to work on a project for them. The client base grew to include just about every sector imaginable — manufacturing, finance, healthcare, education, research — and ranged in size from small mom-and-pop stores to enterprise-level corporations.
Through it all, the customer-centric approach that Rich learned at Apple in his early days became the mission statement for the company: that TSG is a customer service organization that happens to be good with technology. Over the last forty years, TSG has continued to pride itself on always doing the right thing for the customer. The relationships that this philosophy has fostered is proof that treating people right will always lead to a better outcome. Through one technological advance after another, through good years and bad, that motto has served TSG well for forty years — and we hope it will continue to do so for the next forty.