The Suit Magazine

Michael Barski knows exactly how his small business customers think. His own company, Meade Willis, once consisted of three people working around his dining room table. “My wife was our secretary, who walked around the house with a cordless phone,” Barski said. “She had her own line, and whenever somebody would ring, she would answer 'Meade Willis,' and to the outside world, we were a company. [Gordon Willis] was our programmer, if you will, and I was handling the business end, trying to rustle up some accounts.”

Founded in 1995, Meade Willis now helps small businesses become suppliers for the giants of their industries. “The large companies—Walmart, General Motors, Sears—send out their POs via EDI, using their private networks. We, on behalf of their supplier, our customer, intercept those POs in the EDI format. We then translate these POs into human-readable language, such as English, but it could be any business transaction type in any language. Then our customer logs into our site. We know who they are by their password and ID. And then they can see their PO from General Motors. They then fulfill the PO and they can send an invoice to that customer,” Barski explains.

EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is the preferred method for e-business communication because it's relatively secure. “It's a file structure, and it's very efficient. It might be considered being encrypted, because if you look at a printout of an EDI file, nobody can make heads or tails of it. You need software to 'decrypt' it or translate it. And typically a small enterprise can’t afford that type of investment,” Barski said.

Meade Willis' EDI software was originally designed to work on AT&T's private network. But soon, Barski recognized the potential of the Internet. “We had an opportunity to get certified by a major firm out of Detroit for what’s called WebEDI. In other words, it’s EDI over the Web,” Barski said. Meade Willis now provides its EDI software on its website, allowing small companies to compete for orders that would otherwise be unattainable.

“Because we're a small enterprise ourselves, we believe we have an understanding of the mindsets of other small and medium enterprises,” Barski said. “I mean, if you're making brakes for General Motors or Toyota or Hyundai or you're making T-shirts for Walmart, that's all you want to do. You don't understand this other stuff because that's not your business. Very often, entrepreneurs work by the philosophy of 'ready, fire, aim.' They just go blindly ahead. Many won't make it, but of those that do, some are fabulously successful. Really, we are the engine of the economy.”

Barski understands large companies as well, thanks to his years working for Fortune 100 company Honeywell. “I had some really wise sales managers when I went into the sales and management field at Honeywell. And I went from systems to sales, so there was not a lot of sales background in my life. My manager – this is like right at the beginning – he says, 'You're going into sales now; you're going to be a rookie. But there are two things I'd like you to know. Number one: be empathetic to your customers. And number two: listen more than you speak. You've really got to understand your customers.'”

Barski applied that knowledge, and now uses both his software savvy and his sales experience to make his business a success. He looks forward to even more growth as he helps small businesses to achieve their maximum potential.

www.meadewillis.com

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