Blytheco partner and chief client success officer Phil Sim’s description of his greatest career risk resonates with anyone trying to balance supporting a family with taking a career gamble.
“I believe the most important risk I took was bootstrapping my original business that I ultimately folded into Blytheco,” he said. “It was a risk because my newly formed family depended on the success of my business. During the startup stage, every month had instability and emotional and mental stress. That then added emotional and mental stress to the family and the risk I took was ensuring we could still thrive during that challenging time. Today, I do what I do so I can provide for not just my family, but all families that are part of the Blytheco team. But I risked my own family in starting my version of that journey.”
Blytheco is a consulting firm in the software industry. The company has been in business for 42 years, with more than 5,000 enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations.
The company has been involved in several mergers and acquisitions. One of its key initiatives in the coming months and years is Project Luminosity, intended to train and build consultants. “Project Luminosity is about taking our STAR program and providing it to underprivileged areas of the world to give kids who do not have access to technology nor business an opportunity to be successful,” Sim said.
“Our goal is to eventually impact 20,000 kids by first connecting them with our clients in internship programs to work in entry-level jobs, including warehouse, production and even finance.
“As they learn those roles (while using our software systems), they will have the opportunity to stay and build a career with our clients or enroll in our STAR program where they can eventually become consultants.”
Another initiative in the works is Project Philippines. Blytheco plans to establish a presence in the Philippines, allowing work to take place during non-U.S. business hours, which the company said will drive lower costs and faster implementations for its projects.
Blytheco is part of a United Way program, to which many of its employees and leaders donate their time to help kids navigate life challenges. “The greatest way we measure impact and effectiveness is by our culture and employee engagement scores,” Sim said. “We believe developing leaders and giving back ultimately feeds into currencies that we hire for — continuous growth and doing good for the world. The more we do, the higher our employee engagement scores. We believe this is why we have a top 3% employee engagement score over the last five-plus years.”
