The Paratrooper

Neal Grunstra was freshly graduated from college when his life suddenly took a dramatic turn. Like so many other young men of his generation, he was drafted into the U.S. military and suddenly forced to come to terms with a new, much harsher reality. The service was a far cry from his loving childhood home in New Jersey, or his days spent working toward his degree at nearby Fairleigh Dickinson University. “I was shocked at how one is treated in the service,” he remembers today. “It was quite an awakening.”

Blindsided, but not one to shy away from a challenge, Neal chose to join the paratroopers and began the rigorous physical training required to jump out of airplanes. The decision proved to be a fateful one, for his success there would shape his attitude for years to come. “I was just a 170 pound, 6 foot kid, and didn’t have a lot of athletic prowess,” he says. “I realized that, if I could get through airborne training, I could be successful at whatever I set my mind to do.” After four years in the military, Neal knew that the business world could be tackled—and conquered.

Now the President of Mindbank Consulting Group, a business he founded back in 1986, Neal’s career has realized his prediction. In its 27 years, Mindbank has grown from one man to a company of over 200 employees, and although building the business was complicated, his vision was always a simple one: to supply quality workers to businesses in need. His years of experience in the business world had taught him that capable employees are a valuable resource—perhaps the most valuable—and that such people were always in demand. “I always felt that if you had quality people, work got done on time and usually within budget,” he explains. “Whereas, when I employed mediocre talent, I was always explaining our overruns to the client.” Neal knew these experiences were common to entrepreneurs everywhere. Thus, he founded Mindbank, a staffing company that sought to recruit the most talented people he could find, usually in the IT field, and create a database of freelance workers which today comprises over 90,000 people. With this exceptional network, Mindbank now excels at finding the right person for every project.

Today, the scope of the business has expanded significantly. 14 years ago, it won its first government contract from the Department of the Interior, and since then has increasingly moved into contracting for various departments of the federal government, mainly on IT projects. A few years after that, Neal opened a new office in Denver, hoping to create a more national presence and explore the emergency radio field.

“Staffing remains a large piece of the firm’s business, but over the last decade, our work with the government and with emergency radio have become the other two legs of a three-legged stool,” says Neal. “We’re proud of the very crucial work we do in both those arenas. Technical problems with emergency radio services across the country have played a negative role in many recent national tragedies, like the shooting at the Washington Navy Yard and a disastrous fire out in Arizona that claimed 19 lives. In each case, the radio services were not functioning properly, exacerbating the crisis and highlighting the pressing need for improvement.” Seeking to address this need, Mindbank audits radio systems to ensure their functionality and speed. The company also works with the government to streamline the production of radio towers, eliminating unnecessary redundancies and saving millions of dollars in the process.

Upon its three legs of exceptional capability, Mindbank has achieved remarkable success under Neal’s leadership, thanks to his lifelong entrepreneurial spirit. Growing up in Clifton, New Jersey, he was constantly coming up with moneymaking schemes. Even at the young age of seven, he could be found collecting old magazines from around the house to sell to neighbors. “I didn’t realize they were used,” he laughs. “It didn’t work too well. There might have been one kind soul who would buy a magazine or two.” Undeterred, he moved on to shoveling snow, working paper routes, and taking on other neighborhood tasks.

Then, at the age of 12, Neal stumbled into the construction site of a large housing development and found himself a new business. “A couple of the guys working asked if I would get them some soda, so I did, and they gave me a dollar,” he remembers. “In no time, I acquired a wagon and a big metal can filled with ice and soft drinks, and I’d wander through the housing development selling sodas. I took a day off one day, and boy were they mad!” That summer, Neal made a few hundred dollars, and the desire to be his own boss never left him.

Neal’s father was also a role model in that regard. Although his formal education ended after two years of high school, he ran his own successful home-building business. In fact, neither of Neal’s parents attended college, but they encouraged his academic pursuits wholeheartedly, and he became the first in his family to obtain his college degree. Later, he returned to school for a Master’s and Ph.D., inspired by advice his mother had given him. “She told me that nobody could ever take away my education,” Neal affirms. “That was powerful.”

After his years at Fairleigh Dickinson and his time in the service, Neal found himself at a crossroads. It was time to choose a career path, and as he pondered his options, the lessons he learned as a paratrooper came into play. “The field of computer science held a certain interest for me,” he remarks. “But back in those days, in the mid-60s, the general impression was that you have to be a real mathematics whiz to do that. I was okay in mathematics, but I wasn’t a whiz kid. Before being in the service, I would’ve abandoned the idea of going into IT altogether. But after airborne training, I had a completely different self-concept. I truly believed that if I set my mind to something, I could probably do it, within reason. So I ended up in the computer field.”

Neal’s first job was with Honeywell, working at the firm’s headquarters in Boston. He then transferred to a Honeywell branch in Pittsburgh, where he returned to school and obtained his Master’s Degree in Economics at Duquesne University. With a Master’s Degree in hand, Neal then landed a consulting position with Booz Allen in Washington, DC, where he remained for a year and a half.

Though the firm provided excellent opportunities, Neal’s entrepreneurial aspirations were ultimately reignited by the atmosphere and culture of the large enterprise. “I was constantly being told to keep my hours up, and I knew that, as a contractor, the business was keeping a portion of my hourly rate,” he remembers. All the while, he kept his eyes open for a chance to advance in the IT field, and when the perfect opportunity arose, he was ready.

As fate would have it, the University of Pittsburgh hoped to design and build a central information system that, at the time, was exceptionally sophisticated. They brought Neal onboard as part of the management information system project, and although their ambitions were ultimately unrealistic, the university was so impressed with his expertise and skill set that they kept him on to run a research project. “That project was very successful,” Neal recounts. “As a result, a year later, they moved me over to run their computer center.” In that capacity, Neal’s efforts were met with even greater success. He revolutionized their systems, and while it had traditionally taken the university almost two months to print grade reports for their student body, the implemented technology reduced that timeframe to less than two days.

Neal stayed at the University of Pittsburgh for six years, and during that time he met his wife, Jane, and obtained his Ph.D. in Management. Content though he was, he decided it was time to strike out on his own. “I took over as manager of the computer center at age 33,” he remembers. “I realized I could do that for another 32 years and retire, but that I couldn’t deny the feeling that there might be something else out there for me.” Remembering his time at Booz Allen, Neal wanted to utilize his consulting skills and earn the full value of his work. With that ambition, he founded his own IT consulting business in Pittsburgh. When he sold it seven years later, it employed over 60 people.

With one successful business under his belt, Neal knew his future lay in entrepreneurship. He began exploring possibilities and decided Washington, DC was the best location for his hypothetical staffing company. With that, he packed his bags and drove down on September 15, 1986. “At that time, I only knew three people in the city,” he recalls. “I thought it was going to be a little bit of a long putt here, but I intended to do it.”

Since Jane and their two children were already settled in Pittsburgh, Neal decided the only viable option was long-distance commuting while he ensured a move would be worthwhile. Successful though Mindbank is today, he had his work cut out for him when he decided to singlehandedly found and build it in Washington while his wife and children remained in Pittsburgh. For eight months, Neal would wake up at 3:30 on Monday morning, drive the five hours down to Washington, and be on time to open his office at 9:00 AM. On Friday afternoons he would drive the five hours back home to spend the weekend with his family. Still, he believed in his vision, and as he slogged through the first year, he called upon all the forces of perseverance and resilience he’d learned in the military. “Starting out it was just me, and I would make thirty cold calls a day,” he says. “It’s amazing how lucky you can be after about 2,000 cold calls!” Finally, when things were secure enough to move forward, Neal’s wife moved down with their then 7-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son.

Today, both children have found success in their own respective careers. His daughter, now 34, is an attorney for the Commerce Department, and his son, 31, just completed a graduate degree in Cyber Security. To young people entering the business world, Neal stresses the same thing his mother stressed to him all those years ago—education of all kinds. “The business world today is one of continual learning,” he avows. “Don’t just blindly decide to be done with school once you get your college degree. You have to continue differentiating yourself. Things are going to change over a 30 or 40-year career. As technologies evolve, so does business, and so must you.”

He also stresses ethics as the cornerstone of good business, and credits the golden rule as the guiding force behind his leadership philosophy. He considers his management style to be cooperative, and treating people with respect and embracing participative management. “We take the time to clearly lay out the goal, and if we all agree on it, everybody comes onboard and knows what their piece of that objective is,” he details. Neal focuses on finding and hiring the right people rather than micromanaging the wrong ones, and this strategy has paid off in spades; his workforce is self-motivated, using their independence to push horizons and drive innovations.

Self-actualization will certainly be a cornerstone of his lasting legacy, both in the workplace and at home. “I’d like our team to feel they’ve worked for a quality organization,” he says. “And I hope my family is inspired, as well, to take those leaps of faith through life.” Neal’s own leaps started from a plane and translated seamlessly into bold moves that took him to new industries, new businesses, and ironically, new heights. In leaving the service, he chose to go into IT, at a time when the decision was considered a long shot. Succeeding in the IT field, he chose to quit his comfortable position to go it alone. And even succeeding as an entrepreneur, he sold his first company to pursue an even bigger idea. Neal may have left the paratroopers a long time ago, but in the business world, he never quit jumping out of planes.

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