The Power of Positive - Brenda Stallings

 

Brenda Stallings, president and CEO of Matrix Integration of Jasper, listened attentively to ideas brought up by an employee in her office June 6. Brenda has been recognized as one of the top 100 successful and influential women in the information technology industry. She was a recipient of the 2011 Women Excel Bloomington Award and named the 2011 Enterprising Women of the Year Award in the category for businesses with more than $25 million in annual revenue.

 

 

 

Matrix Integration’s president and CEO makes a habit of serving up sunshine and expecting the best, especially at work. It’s an attitude that’s resulted in more than 40 years of business success that started with the former Sound of Music store in Jasper and skyrocketed once she  entered the  technology industry.

 

Brenda’s company today — its name meaning an environment in which something develops and becomes a solution was  picked from employee submissions in a contest — has been named by the  Indiana Chamber of Commerce as the  top woman-owned business in Indiana several times in a row, as well as the state’s top small business of the  year and a Best Place to Work in Indiana five consecutive  years.

 

Now that the  pace  of growing a family and a business is more manageable, Matrix Integration’s 61-year-old boss has time for memberships in multiple national women’s business owner associations. She sits  on the Indiana chamber’s board of directors, serves as chairwoman of Memorial Hospital’s finance committee and is on the  Dubois Strong and Junior Achievement boards. She also  has been a repeat choice on a national business magazine’s “power” list  of the  most influential, powerful and successful executives inthe  technology industry.

 

Not bad  for a girl  without a college degree who  grew up on a St. Meinrad farm with nine siblings.

 

Meeting her gives an average Joe a brush with success. Working for her supplies more than that. She says she  truly wants to help everyone in her orbit succeed and she is a big adherent to the  Law  of Attraction, which basically asserts that positive thoughts and belief in a specific outcome can attract that outcome. When she  discovered that “The Secret,” a 2006 self-help film, championed the  Law  of Attraction, she  started what has become a continuing practice of handing out copies of the  DVD.

 

“I’m a believer that really our minds are big magnets and what we think we will  be attracted to,” she  says.

 

Dave Allen of Jasper consulted with Brenda about the progress on an upgrade and  expansion for Matrix Integration in the basement of the Jasper-based company June 6. The purpose of the remodeling was to offer employees a more unified and warm work environment. For five consecutive years, Matrix Integration has been recognized as a Best Place to Work in Indiana.

 

She  says she  does  things like  putting on her apron for employee appreciation breakfasts because actions speak louder than words.

 

“You  can tell  people what a great job they do, but we try to do fun  things like  the appreciation breakfast” and catered appreciation luncheons, she  says. “Hopefully that shows our people we are not  afraid to take profits and reinvest in ways to have fun with them. We’re  trying to do a lot more of that.”

 

Brenda and her fiancé, Curt Trainer, CEO of the  trike conversion portion of AJ Cycle  & Trike Conversions, live  in Jasper. She  has four adult children — Abby Stallings, Jonathan Stallings and Amy Williams, all of Jasper, and Nathan Stallings  of Noblesville — who  all work for Matrix Integration. The  company provides technology and communications sales and service that involves computer networks, telephone systems, cabling and computer network security. People at Matrix will help a small local company one  day  and then design and engineer computing platforms on a grander scale, such as those at Indiana University and Purdue University that are tackling mammoth research computing. The  company headquarters remains in Jasper but Matrix also has two branches in Kentucky and one  in Carmel.

 

Stallings makes sure her company coaches communication, enthusiasm, talent  development and integrity. She came about her core values honestly.

 

Brenda was  born in the  St. Meinrad home of her parents, Othmar and Pearline Schaefer, in 1951. As a girl, she  worked in the  field, canned and cleaned — whatever could assist her parents. The family ate the beef, pork and vegetables raised on the farm. “One year we put up 1,000 quarts of canned goods,” she  says. “We worked really hard but we didn’t know any different, right?”

 

The  family also  sold  its produce after posting signs by the  highway. “So I guess I learned some of what entrepreneurship was  at an early age and didn’t even know it was  sinking in.”

 

Her  father worked in a factory in addition to farming their 120 acres. And, every Saturday night, she  watched as her father took her mother out on the town.

 

“Us older kids babysat for the  younger ones” when her parents went on dates, she says. “There was hardly ever a Saturday  night that they didn’t go out, which I thought was  really great. It gave them something to look  forward to. I’m sure raising 10 kids wasn’t easy.”

 

After graduating from Dale  High  School in 1969 she  took a job as a typesetter and proofreader for Psychology Today, a magazine  published in St. Meinrad.

 

 

Brenda married Steve Stallings in 1970 and, a year later, they became co-owners of an established Stallings family business: the  Sound of Music. That store initially featured recorded music but quickly expanded in later years to include hi-fidelity equipment, car stereos and musical instruments. In 1973 the  store became a Radio Shack dealer and a few years later the first home and office computers were introduced.

 

Two business units grew out  of the Sound of Music: The  Computer Center, founded in 1979, which initially sold  only computers and later turned to computer consulting and integration for businesses locally and nationwide; and Commsound Telecommunications, in 1980, which provided telephones and cabling for businesses. In 1984 Stallings sold  her interest in the  Commsound division to Dan  Fritch, a former neighbor of hers who  had been managing the  Commsound division. She personally incorporated The Computer Center.

 

Brenda, now  on her own, spent years subcontracting Fritch’s business to supply phones and run cables on sales she made to businesses and schools. From the beginning, she  saw  the  fledgling personal computer and the  5 1⁄4-inch floppy disks in vogue then as a way  to do mailing lists and data processing — things she  had always outsourced — in-house on her own. Soon she  was  selling computers by day  and installing them herself at night.

In 1997, after Brenda and Fritch individually had grown their respective businesses for 13 years, The  Computer Center and Commsound merged. It made sense because lines were being blurred and Brenda and Fritch were about to start competing with each other. They formed Matrix Integration with Brenda as president and CEO and Fritch as executive vice  president. Today,  Matrix Integration employs 85 people and has more than $44 million in sales.

 

Maybe a reason Matrix Integration has hit so many right notes is owed  to the music store roots and so many musically inclined individuals being on the payroll. Those folks are creative, Brenda says, and came to the show with a lot of experience with hooking up public-address systems and the like.

 

As her business grew more complex, Brenda worked to acquire new  skills to manage it.

 

“You  can’t stay focused on just the  cool stuff” in business, says Brenda, who  still misses a simpler time when she  was  able to call  on clients. “You’ve got to do all of the hard stuff you know nothing about. You’ve got to go out  and learn it and surround yourself with people who  will teach you what you  need to learn.”

Her  first child was  born when she  was 21 so, she  says, she  was  learning how  to be a parent while she was learning to run a business. One  mentor for the  latter was  the chief financial officer of St. Louis Music, a company that sold  guitars and amps to the Sound of Music. St. Louis Music’s CFO taught Brenda and many other small-town music store owners many secrets about business acumen, she  says.

 

“My successes have been the  great people who have helped me along the way,” Brenda says.

 

Thanks to technology progression and the ability to access files from anywhere, more than a third of Matrix’s employees are able to work from home, Fritch says. A veteran employee found love  in Canada and moved there a couple of years back. He continued his work for Matrix there and it was about six months before all of the  staff in the corporate office realized he was no longer physically coming into the  building.

 

“It worked well  for us,” Fritch says. The man had skills Matrix would have been hard-pressed to replace after his life change, but technology meant the  company didn’t have to.

 

Brenda laughed with her daughter Abby during an employee appreciation breakfast June 18. All of Brenda's children — Amy Williams and Abby, Jonathan and Nathan Stallings — work at Matrix.

 

The  Matrix family enjoys healthy snacks in its break rooms, a wellness program that includes gym membership reimbursement and an employee purchase program. Everyone goes through a three- day communications class and then gets a steady dose of company emails recognizing little things people or departments have done to impact Matrix in a positive way. On Fridays, there is an opportunity for qualifying employees to dress casual and wear jeans.

 

“In order to wear denim, we either have to submit a ‘Thumbs Up’ or make a contribution to the Denim Day Donation Can,” says marketing specialist Sara Morris, 30, of Jasper.

 

A Thumbs Up is when an employee submits an anonymous note about someone in the  company recognizing that person for leadership, collaboration or excellence in working with clients or other associates. Donations in the  can go to Relay for Life, the fight against Lou Gehrig’s disease, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the Christmas Giving Tree.

 

“When I started working at Matrix in 2005,” Morris says, “I was  welcomed in as part of the  ‘family’ and have felt like  part of the family ever since.”

 

Morris says employees learn to remember  Brenda’s core values when making decisions, and the carryover effect  spills into life outside of the  office. For  her, Morris says, she’s acquired more organization in her life, she  has better relationships with peers and she’s become more outgoing and outspoken. “I definitely look  up to some of the leaders here at Matrix — including Brenda — and try to mimic them in my thinking and everyday life,”  she  says.

 

In addition to helping her executive team keep up with the pulse of where the tech industry is going, Brenda finds herself putting a focus on making more time for family and for giving back to the  community now. She  took the  first two-week vacation of her life last year.

 

	During a Fourth of July party at Brenda's lake house in Loogootee on July 7,Brenda tried on 3D hologram glasses with the daughter of a family friend, Abby Buschkoetter of Jasper, 8, left, along with grandchildren Aubrey Williams of Jasper, 12, Parker Stallings of Noblesville, 5, and Nolan Trainer of Kokomo, 7, before the firework display began.
	Brenda held the door for friends and family members as they arrived for the Fourth of July party at her lake house. Brenda and her family put in long hours of work while in Jasper and use the lake house as their private time to relax and get away.

“My oldest grandchild is 15,” she  says. “I’d like  to be the  grandparent who would go visit the grandkids at college. Staying close to my grandkids is very important to me.”

 

Not a month goes by without a letter from a larger corporate entity suggesting that Matrix become the  subject of a lucrative  merger or acquisition. To Brenda, the reward of having a business is keeping it growing and passing it on.

 

Her  children taking the  company into the future is a legacy she  hopes can become reality.

 

“My kids are willing to take the  risks and work hard,” Brenda says. “I hope it serves them well.”

 

Contact Bill Powell at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

 

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