Starting any new venture comes with risks, but it’s especially daunting when you start the endeavor more than 1,000 miles from home, in a state where you know not a single person. Throw in moving your family while your wife is pregnant with twins, and it’s tough to imagine a more stressful atmosphere to launch a business.
Paige Goss did it anyway. She and her family left their home in North Carolina for Colorado because Goss identified the state as the ideal spot to carve a niche for her IT business, Point Solutions Group.
Alone in an office with her laptop, Goss started her company by cold-calling prospects, guided by the belief that she only needed a chance to prove her model could work. Less than five years later, it’s clear she was right.
Point Solutions Group (PSG) is an information technology and engineering professional services, women-owned small business that operates with a simple guiding mantra: Work smart. Deploy the best people. Keep all data secure. And always provide customers with an efficient “less is more” approach.
PSG has achieved sustained growth every year — continuing to make a bigger impact than the year prior. In the first year of business, PSG achieved revenue growth of $1.2 million. Hitting the million-dollar mark is something only 2% of women-owned companies ever do in their history. This along with four continuous years of double digit growth has put PSG in a position to show anything is possible. PSG grew by 80% in 2020 alone and completed the acquisition of Denver’s KG Lewis. It also hit the next big milestone — ending 2021 around $10 million.
Goss got her start straight out of college with The Select Group, an IT staffing and services firm, in 2010. She built up a team and the business around her, working as an entrepreneur within the organization. By the time she left in 2017, she was managing close to 40 people and had built 10 subdepartments to support the company’s growth. The Select Group went from $1 million in revenue to $160 million and had to hire three people to replace Goss when she left.
Despite not having a technical background, and without being daunted as a young female in a male-dominated industry, Goss dove into PSG headfirst, knowing she had what it took to make it a reality. She identified the market opportunity in Colorado and decided to make it her launching ground, even though she didn’t know a single person in the area. In 2017, in just 43 days, Paige sold her house in North Carolina, bought a house in Colorado, found out her wife was pregnant with twins, and moved across the country.
“The greatest lesson I learned was in the value of vulnerability in leadership,” Goss said. “It is my opinion that leadership isn’t based on tenure, gender, age or past success. Leadership is being in the moment and leading through truth and vulnerability. The moment you can set aside ego, the need to be right, or the need to be in charge is when you can truly empower your team and lead through them.”
Under Goss’ leadership, PSG has achieved a tremendous amount of growth and recognition in four and a half years. In its first year eligible, PSG made it into the top 500 (No. 486) of Inc. magazine’s annual list of America’s 5,000 fastest-growing companies. PSG has also been named on the lists of Colorado’s Top 100 Woman-Owned Companies and Top 200 Private Companies for the past two years.
Goss knows that part of her responsibility is telling her story and representing women and the LGBTQ community at every step of her journey. She has participated in numerous panel discussions on technology, entrepreneurship and women in business. The accomplishment that Goss is most proud of, however, is being named one of 2020’s Colorado Companies to Watch — just three years after launching.
This award is particularly important to Goss because of her investment in the Colorado market. She chose Colorado as the launching ground for PSG because of the market opportunities, but also for the entrepreneurial spirit she saw in the area. Although not a Colorado native, Goss sees Colorado as home, both to her family and her business, so achieving this award so soon after launch was an amazing honor.
