A LIFETIME AT NATIONWIDE VIDEO
What makes Nationwide Video so special? For the nearly 25 years that Nationwide Video has been in business, growth has been the mindset. As is true in any business, we set out to do our best, drive innovation, and create solutions for other businesses. Nationwide Video prides itself on going to the ends of the earth to make their customers’ lives easier.
Personally, I’ve been around Nationwide Video since I was a kid. I was born in the mid-90s and Nationwide Video was born just a few short years later. Nationwide started out as a two-man operation in Milford, Michigan with an office that could barely fit projectors in and out the front door. Years later, they graduated to a new facility that had doors big enough for projectors to roll through without buttering up the door frame. With such growth, they eventually did well enough to get a forklift—to that point, they were lifting early Barco projectors that weighed in at a couple hundred pounds and can very well be cited as the cause of modern day back pain in a lot of the early Nationwide team members (and probably a lot of you reading this). As I hear the stories recounted by the guys who donned the titles of employee #2 and #3, it’s easy to recognize that they were aware that this was just part of the gig. In the way that any lifelong friends share a special bond, the ground floor employees share that laughable comradery about the time and effort they dedicated to helping a small business start to see success.
The metaphorical scoreboard each year has shown almost unbelievable exponential growth for Nationwide Video in size, but more importantly, in understanding what its customers need. If you have worked with Nationwide over the years, you know that the latter is far more important than the former and it’s something that the entire team at Nationwide strives towards tirelessly. To reference a hockey analogy, since at the end of the day Nationwide Video is founded by a bunch of hockey players, there’s a famous story that Wayne Gretzky recounts after losing the Stanley Cup Finals. Reluctantly assuming he’s going to have to endure seeing the opposition celebrate as he passes their locker room on the way to his own, he recognizes that they were exhausted, applying ice packs, and nursing injuries instead of celebrating. It was at that moment that he realized what it truly took to be the best.
This type of commitment to such an ambitious goal is something that often only works with a small handful of incredibly dedicated individuals and like all great things (See: Chris Bosh, Dwayne Wade, & Lebron James) usually only lasts for a short window of time. So, with each year that passes, the challenge remains: how does a growing business maintain the character on which it laid its foundation? In most instances, companies simply don’t. They outgrow their humble beginnings. They start trying to become something they aren’t. However, if you have been a partner of Nationwide Video over the years, you know that the DNA of the company is crystallized. So, what’s the secret?
As I walk the halls of Nationwide’s headquarters, still only a few miles from where I grew up, I recognize the familiar faces of people I’ve known since I counted my age on my fingers. There are people who have been at this company since day one. Those undefinable characteristics that make up a great team, that indescribable identity is present each day when these day one employees show up and hop on the phones, QC projectors, or instill that company culture into new team members. And as is true in any great thing, we will evolve, people will move on, times will change, but the culture of Nationwide is here to stay.