Family Business Forum Member Spotlight: Stone’s Office Equipment
This year, we’re highlighting members of our Family Business Forum with an interview series that asks local family-owned businesses what makes them tick and brings them to participate in the forum, held at VCU School of Business and coordinated by The Center for Corporate Education.
To kick things off, we sat down with Sam Stone from Stone’s Office Equipment.
In a few sentences, describe your family business.
Stone’s Office Equipment is a local, family-owned document company. We work with offices to help improve productivity and quality of their paper process by offering copiers, printers, document management and managed print services. We help share information; paper (copiers & printers), electronically (scanning and document software), visual (display boards and video wall/video conferencing)
What role do you play in your family business?
I am the President and Head Cheerleader. My main role is to keep the communication lines open and moving freely through our company and into our client’s offices.
Why do you participate in the VCU Family Business Forum?
I love learning, especially from other people’s experiences. Hearing the VCU FBF leaders, speakers and members talk about their experience has been incredibly beneficial to me and our business.
Describe a “lightbulb” moment you’ve had that has helped your family business.
There is no such thing as over communicating. People must hear it, see it in action and continuously hear it in order to live it. Also, as the leader of the company I must set the example by living it out every day. In my talks with some very successful business leaders, they felt the hardest thing was to communicate effectively. It made me realize I need to be more intentional with my message about what and where our company needed to do and the direction we are taking.