-: My name is Chris Rump and I'm the CEO of Flight.
So at Flight we try to bring people together
using technology in the food service industry.
So primarily our customers are in restaurant, hotel.
You know, I run the whole company.
And what that means is that the buck has to stop with me.
If there are large scale decisions that are on deck
I have to make sure that I approve them.
If something goes wrong
like I ultimately I'm the person that needs to make sure
that that's righted and people are happy.
So I have a role in our finance team.
I have a role in our sales team.
I have a role inside of our marketing and engineering teams
and so I really kind of have my fingers dipped
in all avenues in the business just to make sure
that everything is working the way that it should.
I would say that the biggest responsibility I have
is revenue generation and expense reduction.
You know, when it all comes down to it
the finance world is really where things lay.
And if we're not a profitable company
we can't take care of the people that we employ.
So if we're not making any money, that's not good.
So at Flight, we've spent the last two years working
on a new rollout for a point of sale product that we owned.
And so, I've been in that every day for the last 600 days
and it's a huge undertaking.
So we've engineered it, you know, we've designed it
we've bug tested it, we've rolled it
out and tested it with customers
and done all of that through the entire process.
I mean there are so many different organizations, companies
and people that are working on this with us.
We have a bunch of vendor partners.
So there, in the beginning there was relationships to build.
There were contracts to build
and negotiate through and execute and sign.
There have been project management meetings
and leadership meetings in terms of
how are our partnerships going?
How are the engineering teams doing?
Where are we in the timeline of a process
and making sure that all those things are done.
Once we get through part of the engineering process
then we have to look at how do things look to a customer?
And are things working and designed
the way that we expected them to?
And as we put them out into the real world
are they being utilized in the right way
that we intended them for, or do we need to go back
to R and D and make adjustments
so that our customers are happy?
Now that I'm a little older
and the business is a little bit more mature
I tend to travel a little bit less.
And certainly now that we're past the pandemic
things have changed a lot.
Prior to 2019, I was on a plane
probably two round trips a month on average.
So I was taking between 20 and 25 flights a year.
Now I'm probably taking closer to five or six, maybe eight
which is a lot more manageable.