Today we’d like to introduce you to Bryan Payne.
Hi Bryan, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
When I retired from the Air Force I felt a little lost and needed to find ways to keep busy but also to get some satisfaction from. I still have a corporate career, and needed to do things that would give back to the community. I was talking to Gary Matthews, Chairman of Children’s Charities of the Midlands, and I suggested we could raise funds with an online auction. He told me right then, “Make it happen”. That is what got me started, We just had our 7th auction this year in conjunction with the polar plunge. The auction this year brought in almost $13,000 dollars.
I still missed my military connection, and heard about a veterans meet up nearby. It was four or five vets having a beer, and the guy who organized it wasn’t a vet but thought we needed it. After a few months, we decided to make it into something, and I was ranking at the time, so I took on leading the Vets Meet Up here in the northeast part of Richland County. We went from four to now we consistently have between 35 and 50 vets each month, along with great guest speakers. This is connecting a lot of vets in the area with other vets as well as other community activities.
My connections through the CCM, and the vets meet up, led me to lead a charity Jambalaya cook off in 2024, as well as to volunteer with the Blythwood Chamber of Commerce for Ribfest last year.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
One of the struggles I had personally was how to get the word out about Children’s Charities of the Midlands auction, as well as the vets meet up. Facebook and Instagram have been a big help with that, but also word of mouth has made both even better. I did not think that I would need to become a social media expert, and now its really a thing.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I work for ePlus Technology Inc. as the director of collaboration strategy. I help our global technology firm build offerings for all things collaboration. For example last year I developed a managed Zoom Phone and Zoom Contact Center offering for medium businesses. In addition to that we work with many other vendors including Cisco, Microsoft, and HP. We can sell, configure, and manage nearly any collaboration solution in the market today. The neat thing about ePlus is that my part of the company is only about 7% of it. We also work in networks, network security, AI, data center, cloud to name a few of the other offerings we have.
I spent many years working on video conferencing solutions, and now look at what was complex and see that anyone can have a video call right on their mobile phone. Taking care of customers is what our organization does best, we solve business issues with technology, and then help customers with other business problems with additional technologies as if they are an extension of our own business.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
Do things that make you happy, work should not be a drudgery. Find other activities that also bring you joy. Volunteering and making a difference in the community brings me joy, I wish I knew this when I was starting out – back then I just knew to work hard, and so I did, but it didn’t always bring joy.
The second thing is make friends wherever you are – that includes your close friends, but also your neighbors, and people in your community. When you get connected you will feel that you are part of something bigger and more important than just yourself. Make those connections.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ccmidlands.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bapayne/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bryan.payne.942
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryan-payne-778a7120/
