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John Joyce has been fascinated with technology since a young age. “I was breaking things before I was fixing them,” he says. “The fixing it kind of became a necessity, because I broke it and had to figure out how to make it work again.”
He started his first company, Republic Technologies, while still a junior at the University of Florida. That company merged with CRS Technology Consultants in 2015, and Joyce is now co-owner of CRS, which has 18 employees and 140 partners. As a managed service provider, CRS helps its clients with all of their technology needs.
“Technology has become so integral regardless of what you do for a living,” says Joyce. “We serve everyone from landscape companies and plumbers to first responders and every kind of business in between. All are equally important, and all of their needs are completely different.”
That variety is one thing that appeals to Joyce about his profession. “I have a ruinously short attention span, so this industry as a whole has always served as a great outlet, because no two days are the same,” he says. “I love that new set of things to solve. I remind my team and myself all the time that if we ever look in the mirror and say we’ve finished the job, we’ve already lost. That push to keep evolving — if that ever goes away, we might as well pack it up.”
Joyce counts a number of mentors along the course of his career, people who “have seen things in me that maybe I didn’t know were there,” he says. His current business partner, Julie Klein, is one of those such mentors.
“It’s very unique, in my mind, that I get to work shoulder to shoulder with someone I simultaneously collaborate with and constantly look up to and respect,” he says. “A whole lot of what I’m doing, there is no way I’d be here doing it if it wasn’t for her leadership direction.”
Joyce supports the community in a number of ways, whether that’s serving on a nonprofit board, volunteering, or helping fire and rescue agencies restore their digital infrastructure after Hurricane Ian. The Fort Myers native believes in helping the organizations that help people in his own backyard. He also tries to take on hobbies like cooking and working with his hands to counterbalance his techy side.
“I have my digital and analog selves,” he says. “And there are times when I really have to go searching for that analog self, because the other one gets a little too uppity sometimes.”
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