Berry Goss and Pro2Serve

Berry Goss founded Pro2Serve about 14 years ago after working for SAIC for in a variety of positions. While there he learned all about business from acquisitions, to proposals, to being a program manager. He eventually decided he wanted to build a business from the ground up and not spend 50% of his time doing administrative duties. After discussing it with his family, he took the plunge as an entrepreneur and moved to Oak Ridge to start his service based business. Pro2Serve is an technical and engineering services firm that sells knowledge and solutions mainly in the nuclear industry. Its four business units are design engineering, physical security systems, environmental management, and nuclear security division.

The most valuable thing I took away from the presentation given by Berry Goss was what he said to us about values. His philosophy was to set baseline values in a company that would attract people who believed in those. He also believed that good long lasting companies have a set of core values that are constant in changing markets. When he started Pro2Serve, he wrote into the bylaws that they are committed to giving back to the communities in which they work. Specifically, every year they would take 10% of their profits from and disperse it over the next year to a variety of charities. He was able to successfully defend these values when pursuing venture capital which he said was one of the more difficult parts of his journey.

Because Mr. Goss’s business is heavily dependent on the quality of his employees and their ability to solve their customers problems, I asked him what is strategy was for hiring and retaining quality employees. He said that the main way was through the network of people he and his current employees know. This affirms they many times I have heard how important networking is.