When Tom Loftus was five years old, he scanned the bookshelves at his grandparents’ house, looking for an interesting read. To his disappointment, every book to be found was in Samoan, since neither his grandparents nor his mother spoke English as a first language. Not easily deterred, however, young Tom continued to scan the shelves until, at last, he found one readable set of books: an encyclopedia set. The boy read it from beginning to end with little help—not because it was easy, but because his family did not read English.
“Working through the encyclopedia in that way taught me to love challenges for their excitement as much as for their rewards,” Tom remarks today. “It also taught me about everything and everyone, and I was particularly drawn to other cultures. As I learned about those other cultures, I realized how lucky I was. Whenever things got tough, I thought about a kid in Yugoslavia, or a refugee in Chad. There are always people that are suffering more than me, so I learned to stop complaining and focus on the positives in life.” And finally, it fueled in him a curiosity about the world that left him always looking for the next horizon to pursue. There was a whole world of adventure to be had, and Tom Loftus wanted to experience it all.
Now, as Co-founder, President, and CEO of LS Technologies, LLC, Tom has found the ultimate challenge, and one he will never grow tired of—running his own company. LS Technologies is a thriving government contracting, telecommunications, engineering, and IT medley focused on hardware maintenance across the country, with employees in 26 states. He first envisioned the company during his years working at the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA), where he headed five telecommunication enterprises nationwide. “I had contractor support, but I was fully aware that I knew more than they did,” Tom remembers. “I thought that if I had an expert like me, I could make the work more efficient and focus more on what the government actually wanted me to do. I decided that, if I couldn’t find that company, I would create it.”
When Tom left the government, he brought some of the most knowledgeable engineers and technicians in the business with him in order to create a cradle-to-grave telecommunications effort that would install and maintain cable communications for phones, computers, servers, and air traffic control systems. Since LS Technologies was responsible for the initial installation of the product, customers returned to them for maintenance throughout the product’s lifetime, which allowed the company to provide high-end services at a reasonable price.
While Tom may have finally reached the challenge of his lifetime, the years between reading the Encyclopedia and today have been marked with a drifter’s desire to search for the next step. He would find contentment for a few years, then eventually grow unsettled and move on. This wanderlust of spirit seemed to begin almost as early as his life did. He was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1955, to his Samoan mother and Irish father serving in the United States Coast Guard. The family remained in Hawaii for just two months after his birth, thus beginning Tom’s lifelong travels. Before finishing third grade, he had attended five different schools in a range of countries that included the Philippines, Japan, Guam, and the United States in Honolulu and Seattle. “It never bothered me,” Tom confirms. “Some people don’t like change, but I found it exciting, and it doesn’t take long for me to get comfortable in a new place. But eventually, I get too comfortable and grow bored. There’s always something to do, but when it gets easy, I want the next step of the challenge.”
Tom, however, is the first to correct himself that the term ‘bored’ is the least fitting of words for his childhood demeanor. Because his father was constantly traveling for the first thirteen years of his life, his mother kept him on a tight schedule. At the time, direct deposit did not yet exist, so the family was forced to stretch their money while they waited for Tom’s father to reach a port and send his payments home. His mother had grown up in a poor home herself, so she was well versed in the art of making do and ensured that her children were free of want. Tom may have only had two pairs of clothes for school each year, but there was always food on the table and a roof over their heads. Her own childhood struggles had taught her the value of hard work and integrity, which she passed on to Tom by expecting him to help the family. Since he was the oldest, he began mowing lawns at the age of eight years old, and over the following years picked beans and tomatoes every summer and worked a newspaper route to help make ends meet.
While Tom enjoyed working for wages, he was quite averse to homework. In his eyes, it was a task for people who needed practice outside of school, and since Tom was a straight A student, he spent his free time doing other things. “I would get A’s on my report card, but the comments said I wasn’t living up to my full potential,” he recalls. He carried the same philosophy into his athletics. In his main sport, Track and Field, he would always win races, but only by an extra step or two, rather than big margins. His parents saw his raw talent, however, and began dreaming early that he would attend the Coast Guard Academy, become an officer, and live a better, more stable life than they had.
While Tom was, in fact, accepted to the Coast Guard Academy, he came to the conclusion just weeks before reporting for duty that he could not bring himself to commit the next nine years of his life to that path so quickly without exploring on his own first. With that, he placed his admission on hold and spent a year riding his motorcycle, camping, and working to earn just enough money to get him to his next destination. After a year of living this nomadic, adventurous lifestyle, he enlisted in the Coast Guard, where he served for five years. Despite his initial hesitation to join the military, the Coast Guard offered him the adventure he was craving, allowing him to sail all over the Orient and South Pacific. The Coast Guard trained him to be an Electronics Technician, a skill that would help him in the future. While he excelled in that discipline, it wasn’t enough to satisfy his need for challenge, so he volunteered to go into the US Navy Diver Program and became the first Electronics Technician Navy Diver in the Coast Guard. Becoming a Navy Diver opened up even more opportunities for adventure, sending him to many of the places he had read about in that encyclopedia at his grandparent’s house all those years ago.
At the age of twenty-five, Tom finished his service and enrolled as a full time student at the University of Washington in hopes of becoming an Oceanographer, which was paid for by the GI Bill. Despite his success in school, however, he left before attaining his Bachelor’s Degree to get married at the age of twenty-seven.
Suddenly, with a house and a wife to provide for, Tom found that his drifter days were over. Knowing he needed a job, he found work through the government at the submarine base in Washington State. “Although it wasn’t the job of my dreams, he didn’t complain,” he remembers. “I’d been raised to understand that nothing in life would be handed to me, so I began at the bottom and slowly worked my way up the ranks of the government.”
Tom eventually took a new job in Florida, where he worked for the next three years before moving to Colorado, where he and his wife were divorced. “That sent me into the only dark days I can remember,” he remarks. “I grew up believing that commitments are for life, so it felt like a failure to me. I was never one to hold on to negativity, however, and with the help of a friend, I learned to let go of what I couldn’t control.”
Now, Tom looks back on the divorce with gratitude, since it allowed him the opportunity to meet his current wife and best friend, Mona. When they met, he lived in Colorado and she lived in Washington, so their relationship evolved slowly over occasional lunches when time allowed. He had joined the FAA by then, and was able to easily transfer to Seattle in order to be near her and her two young daughters.
Tom Loftus, who had been on the move and at great speeds for his entire life, found an unrivaled peace and calm happiness in settling down with his new family, and it was time for his professional life to follow suit. He took the Professional Engineer Exam and passed, rendering him a licensed engineer. His life was stable, and if he had stayed with the FAA for seven more years, he would have been able to retire comfortably.
But in October of 2000, Tom felt that adventurer’s pull again. Y2K had brought about an exceptionally heavy workload at FAA, and he was eager to redeem eight of the twelve weeks of vacation time he had accumulated during the preceding two years of constant work. His time off was everything he’d hoped for, but when it was time to return, he found he had run out of patience and stamina for the job. It was that old familiar feeling that he had developed from being the son of a military man—that he not only embraced change, but demanded it. “We moved every three years, and I looked forward to it,” Tom laughs. “I’d enjoy what I was doing for a while, but when I would find myself getting tired of waking up and going to work, I knew it was time to look for something else. When you’re working for someone else, you have limitations. You have to do it their way, and the challenges eventually run out.”
Tom wasn’t the only one feeling this way in 2000. A coworker and fellow engineer joined him in the pursuit of the ultimate professional challenge: founding a company. “He liked the inside, paper creation part of the work, while I was more interested in the outside, hands-on side of things,” Tom recalls of the partnership. With that, LS Technologies was born.
Eleven months passed before Tom saw his first paycheck. Then, when the company had grown to six employees, Tom’s partner found that, due to personal and health issues, he was unable to go on with the effort. He returned to FAA and took his wife, who kept the books, with him. Tom had no choice but to buy his co-founder’s share and hire a business manager. That individual, also from the FAA and with an MBA from Cornell, deserved a higher salary than he could afford at the time, so they compromised by giving him 19 percent of the company. “His philosophy is like mine, so we built the company without incurring debt,” Tom says of his co-owner. “I’m pretty frugal; I don’t like to owe people money. My wife is that way too. When we want something, we either pay for it right then or save up if we can’t afford it. I believe everyone should learn to live within their means.”
While the benefits may not have shown immediately, Tom’s frugal decisions have allowed LS Technologies to not only survive, but to grow into the thriving company it is today. He expects to close the year at $35 million, with approximately 250 employees. And, with first-hand experience under his belt, Tom has helped with the launch of three other companies. “I’ve warned those founders that starting a company is not easy,” he affirms. “You spend eight hours helping the customer, and then after those eight hours you build your business. Expect to work 18 to 20 hours a day and on weekends, and when something has to be done, you don’t have anyone to hand it off to. I’ve been lucky that my wife is so understanding of this, but there have been times I’ve had to cancel vacations because there’s no one else to do what has to be done. You have to do things you don’t like to do, but its part of the business, and it pays off in the end.”
To young entrepreneurs entering the business world today, Tom also stresses the importance of fierce independence. “If you have a goal in life, don’t depend on anyone to achieve it for you,” he says. “And stay true to your word. If I say I’ll do something for you, even if the factors change, I’ll do it. If I say I’ll be somewhere at a certain time, I’ll be there, even if I wake up sick. I know people who make plans and a few days later say they don’t feel like doing it anymore, but that’s not me. If I say I’ll do it, I will.” Finally, Tom offers the knowledge he has instilled in his daughters—that you must always be responsible for your decisions. “No one else will get you out of it,” he explains. “I think of all the possibilities before I do something, so good or bad, when I make a decision, it’s my fault or my reward.“
As Tom now prepares to slowly withdraw from the company and hand it off to his new CEO, he looks to more adventures in the future, but without the same restlessness. “That void has been satisfied,” he says confidently. “If it weren’t for my wife and my company, I would have left years ago looking for the next challenge. And now, with my company thriving and my daughters doing well, I look forward to new kinds of adventures—traveling with Mona, spending time with family, and yes, the occasional motorcycle ride around the world.” In other words, the restless wanderer in him that is constantly searching for the next challenge is at peace.
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