Carl Dorvil is the son of Haitian immigrants and spent his formative years in Garland, TX. He later graduated with distinction from Southern Methodist University (SMU) in 2005 with a triple major in public policy, economics, and psychology; and subsequently received his MBA from the SMU Cox School of Business. His first successful business venture was Group Excellence, an academic mentoring and tutoring company.
Today, Dorvil is CEO and founder of GEX Management and is the youngest African American CEO of any company to go public (trading as OTCQB: GXXM in 2016).
Tell us about your beginnings, as well as the beginnings of Group Excellence.
I’m the proud son of Haitian immigrants who came to North America; neither of whom initially knew how to speak English. They worked hard to provide my sister and me with access to opportunity. They also knew the value of education and encouraged us in our academic studies. Upon graduation from high school, I was accepted to SMU, where I pursued a triple major and then completed an MBA at the Cox School of Business.
Early in my college tenure, I was inspired to start a tutoring and mentoring company. I chose the tutoring industry to launch my first business because I believed the capital requirements would be fiscally attainable. I distinctly recall being in class one day when a classmate of mine stated she had a tutoring session, which she was not able to fulfill, and suggested that I substitute for her. Little did I know when I accepted her invitation that I would be tutoring the son of well-known restaurateur Phil Romano of Macaroni Grill. As it turned out, I tutored Romano’s son from the third grade through the eighth grade, and I made a deal with him that if I tutored his son that he would tutor me. He agreed.
During my early days with Group Excellence we employed college students to become classroom tutors and mentors. My car served as my mobile office as I drove around campus passing out applications and encouraging students to serve as tutors for Group Excellence. I even learned magic tricks and would conduct performances between classes in order to gather small crowds around me so that I could promote the opportunity. Under the NCLB Act (No Child Left Behind) initiated during the tenure of former President George W. Bush, students in low performing schools were eligible to receive a $1,500 voucher for tutoring. former President Barack Obama then doubled the waiver from $1,500 to $3,000 per student when he came into office. Against this backdrop and within a short span of time, Group Excellence expanded to serve low performing schools, including grade schools, middle schools, and high schools throughout much of Texas. Likewise, at one point, Group Excellence was the second largest employer of SMU students. During my tenure at the helm of the company, Group Excellence served over 30,000 students and employed approximately 2,000 tutors.
What led you to the decision to sell Group Excellence?
By the time I determined I was ready to sell Group Excellence, we had achieved noteworthy stature. The company was listed on the Inc. 500 list among the fastest growing education companies in the U.S. At that point, I was ready to take some chips off the table. I recall a conversation I had with my parents regarding various offers we had received and asking,“Which deal should I take?” My mother looked at me and said, “We’ve come a long way from Haiti. Any of these multi-million dollar offers will do fine.”
We eventually decided to partner with a Texas-based private equity firm that we had been referred to. Unfortunately, the new owners embarked on actions that disserved the health and vitality of the company. Case in point, within two months of acquiring Group Excellence, the corporate footprint was expanded to serve 30 cities in 13 states. I believe this growth took place too quickly. Furthermore, the investors chose not to invest financially in the company in a manner that was commensurate with the expansion, so I reluctantly had to fire 30 of my friends. I was only 28 years old at the time and it was a tough decision, but it stabilized the business. Almost two years to the day after I sold Group Excellence I was able to buy it back for 10 percent of what I had originally sold it for.
What do you think allowed Group Excellence to succeed so spectacularly?
Plain and simple, the back office. There were multiple successful components to the company, but we wouldn’t have grown at all apart from the back office. Hiring thousands of college students to be tutors, managing and tracking 30,000 students, building the infrastructure to receive funds, and appropriately scaling the business is what made Group Excellence such an incredible business venture. As a young, talented, and courageous entrepreneur, I was focused on growing my business, but you truly need a back office to be successful. This reality didn’t hit home for me until after I initially sold Group Excellence. I thought to myself, “I’m good at school and I’m good at business. I’ll be good at investing too.” So I purposely sought out other entrepreneurs who were talented, motivated, and arguably the best of the best, and I invested in them. Unfortunately, I lost a lot of money in the process. At that point, my vice president (now my president and COO) sat me down and said, “Carl, these businesses keep failing because we aren’t giving them the necessary support they need in the back office.” She argued that she should be the one to oversee the back office dimension of their businesses because that is her expertise. She additionally suggested that I should focus on being an entrepreneur, because mentoring was what I was good at. Once we made that small tweak the business began to flourish and I started seeing a return on my investment.
What differentiates GEX Management from its competitors?
GEX Management is in actuality the back office company that originally supported Group Excellence when I was in college at SMU. GEX Management also maintains the same EIN number I used when I filed with the SEC to go public. So there’s been a thread of continuity that has grounded the company from the beginning. But while some things have remained the same, other things have changed, such as our business model.
GEX Management initially grew out of Group Excellence with a mission to provide back-office functions to small and medium-sized companies with a specialized focus on serving women and minority-owned businesses. Operating in the PEO (Professional Employer Organization) industry, we competed with well-known providers such as ADP, Insperity, and Paychex. As the company grew, so did our vision. Eventually, it became self-evident to us that we had larger ambitions. We wanted to leverage our public vehicle to more meaningfully nurture and support the companies we serve. In short, we wanted to create a rich ecosystem which would undergird and nourish these entities. We then developed what we refer to as the S3 (Seed, Soil, Sun) model to enable our companies to become the best, most efficient, and most profitable they can be. While there are other business ecosystems in existence, ours is one-of-a-kind; singular.
What causes are you most passionate about?
Who I am today was largely forged during my years with Group Excellence. I remain convinced that education is the great social equalizer, and the education system may be the civil rights issue of our generation.
What’s the best piece of advice you would give to someone starting their own business?
Don’t. Seriously. My advice is to steer clear of heartache, loneliness, and stress. If, however, an entrepreneur hears my advice and impetuously determines to move forward no matter the cost, then she/he has what it takes to be successful. For everyone in this category, I want to state emphatically that wishing is not the same thing as working. Wishing never finished a thesis, won a marathon, or launched a new franchise. As an entrepreneur, I’ve had to perspire to acquire every inch of my success. You will too because there are no shortcuts on the road to being superior. You have to show up for your own life.
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