3 minute read
Perseverance
PERSEVERANCE, PERSISTENCE, AND PROFIT
BY EMMA WRIGHT ('20)
ROCKY WILKERSON GRADUATED from Southern Nazarene University in 2012 with a degree in organizational leadership and a hunger for success. Beginning in 2015 with a small business consisting of one office and two employees, Rocky is now nationally recognized as the founder of 2020’s third fastest growing company in Oklahoma and one of Inc. 5000’s fastest growing companies.
While Wilkerson has found success after obtaining both a bachelor’s and, in 2015, master’s degree from SNU, he admits that school was challenging for him, having to persevere through an extended schooling process, saying, “My mom has always been educationally focused, but for me, I was a little late to that game… But I ended up at SNU because of Character, Culture, Christ.”
Persisting through his undergraduate degree, Wilkerson anticipated immediate success after graduation: “I got my bachelor’s degree, moved to Tulsa, and thought I was going to conquer the world with a bachelor’s degree. Little did I know that you usually start off only making $35-40,000 a year with a bachelor’s degree!”
With a sales personality, prior sales experience and a drive to create something on his own, Wilkerson entered SNU Tulsa's MBA program where he began developing his business model. “The master’s program, for me, gave me the financial and accounting knowledge to be comfortable within the business,” Wilkerson explained. “With my bachelor’s degree, I had the organizational leadership, but I didn’t have the financial component to run
SNU Tulsa Campus
the business. The financial component came with the master’s program which set me up to be confident in my role.”
In 2015, Wilkerson began the staffing company, Certified Source. By 2016, the business hit a milestone only 2 in 10,000 businesses achieve: growing a company's revenue to $1 million within the first year. The business continued to boom, expanding to two locations and 160 employees in 2016, and to now having five different locations and 700 employees in 2021.
As he continued to pursue excellence as a business leader, he began to use his successful business model in other projects, creating Performance Personnel Partners and Total Clean USA in 2019 and 2020. Both businesses have exceeded revenue projections and continue to grow much like Certified Source, a testament to Wilkerson’s dedication to growth and thoughtfulness in his leadership and business model.
His advice to young business leaders is to persevere and persist, reminiscing on his early career, saying, “Starting any new business is not an easy thing to do, so persistence and perseverance for me is having a plan and executing a plan - putting one foot in front of the other.”
Not only has Wilkerson’s hard work and perseverance shown in his business success, but at the foundation of it all is his relationship to God: “If you keep God first and have faith, things are going to work out… Any and all decisions that I make, God is on the top of my mind when I make it.” Rocky Wilkerson’s commitment to perseverance and growth applies not only to business, but also to his faith and service to his community.
Certified Source Tulsa Staff
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Learn More about Certified Source Staffing Professionals at certifiedsource.com
