Executive Insider: Chelsey Bode

Closing in this fall on four years as the sole owner and CEO of Pearson-Kelly Technology, Chelsey Bode has come a long way from her days in 2007 working as a salesperson – and sixth employee – at the Springfield-based managed service provider.

The company was founded in 2002 by Byron and Lisa Pearson. Bode’s father, Mike Kelly, became a partner two years later and lone owner by 2011. That also was the year Bode began accumulating shares of the company before purchasing Pearson-Kelly in 2021.

Since taking sole ownership from her dad as part of a succession plan, Bode has led company growth to nearly 50 employees, an all-time high of $10 million in revenue last year and its first out-of-state acquisition in 2023. She says acquiring Digital Printing Solutions, a Rogers, Arkansas, copier and printer supplier, was a “financial a-ha moment” for Pearson-Kelly, noting DPS had $2.5 million in annual revenue and 12 employees at the time of the deal. The Rogers office joins Pearson-Kelly’s Queen City headquarters at 2013 W. Woodland St. and an additional location in Joplin.

“The game plan then and still is to take and cultivate the clientele that have loved the company that they had been doing business with – most of them have been 20-plus years clients – and then cross-sell our services,” she says of the DPS acquisition, adding Pearson-Kelly provides managed information technology, phone systems, copiers, printers and business surveillance services.

Knowing she wanted to be in sales upon graduating from Missouri State University in 2006, Bode didn’t initially desire to come on board at Pearson-Kelly. But after seeing her father struggle with salespeople turnover for a year, she changed her mind.

“Part of it was just respect for him, knowing that I was early in my career, I knew the gig, and so my thought was, ‘I’ll give you a couple of years to just go out and at least we can divide and conquer, and you don’t have to babysit me,’” she says, adding she even ran profit and loss reports for herself. “I was out there hustling, trying to put Pearson-Kelly on the map, and just have always felt like we need to be bigger, stronger, faster and want everyone to know who we are.”

The eldest of Kelly’s three children, Bode says she and her dad have always been buddies.

“We’ve always had similar aptitudes for sales, whether I was selling magazines for a school fundraiser, whatever it was, or if he had to do a walkathon, he’d incentivize me to go out and just do the neighborhood on his behalf,” she says. “I think being the oldest too, his expectations for me have always been maybe a little higher.”

As her early start at Pearson-Kelly progressed, Bode says she was always evaluating herself and the company.

“Once the hard work started taking off and I saw that things were actually working, then it became addicting,” she says. “Then it was how do we hire that next salesperson? How do we open up in Joplin?”

Looking back, Bode says she was kind of a nerd.

“Probably still am,” she says with a laugh. “Working together, I think the one thing that he’s always been really good at is just self-management, where I had more of a vision for wanting to scale.”

Coming into Pearson-Kelly as the owner’s daughter, Bode says she probably put more pressure on herself because the company was so small, and she wanted to make a big impression.

“I felt like I definitely had to prove more than the average [employee] so that I didn’t get looked at as maybe some favoritism or nepotism,” she says.

Bode recalls around 2011 that she was leading some employees but didn’t want to change her title from sales representative. It didn’t sit well with her grandfather, Charles Johnson.

“He basically said, ‘You’re an idiot.’ He came from an education background, so he was a superintendent for years and he’s like, ‘Chelsey, it’s very important. You don’t need to be the smartest one in the room, but you need to ask questions,’” she says. “‘They need to know your title. They need to understand exactly what your function and purpose is, what you’re accountable to for the company and you owe that to the people working with you to understand that.’”

That year, she became vice president, followed by president in 2018 and CEO three years later.

The honest advice is why Bode counts her grandfather, who died in 2023, among her many mentors. It’s a list she says also includes her parents and industry peers such as John Horton, longtime owner of former Springfield IT firm Layer 3 Technology, and Brad Knepper, owner of Denver, Colorado-based All Copy Products.

“He’s had about 18 acquisitions,” she says of Knepper, noting he helped her during the DPS acquisition. “He was very instrumental in helping look over the contracts because he’s just lived through a couple things that blew up in his face after the fact that he thought he had nailed down.”

Another mentor, Kirk Elmquist, executive director with Branson/Lakes Area Community Enhancement District, says he’s known Bode for most of her time at Pearson-Kelly.

“I just encouraged her to really get involved in the community and just tried to hand her leads and help her along the way,” he says of his mentorship. “Then it really just kind of turned into watching this young entrepreneur take on the second generation in that business.”

Noting Bode is very growth oriented, Elmquist says she takes criticism well, which creates good leadership and growth.

“She has a fire in her, she has a leadership quality, and she has a spirit of community that you just don’t see in every person that comes along,” he says, adding the two remain in contact quarterly on potential sales leads.

Taylor Wells has worked with Bode for six years at Pearson-Kelly, where she serves as director of service and operations. Noting transparency is one of the company’s core values, Bode’s leadership style reflects that tenet.

“She really leads by example in the sense of she’s our visionary, so she brings a lot of ideas and light to it,” Wells says, adding Bode also is the humblest leader she’s ever had. “Then she really trusts her team to then go out and execute some of these visionary things and the scalability to really enhance the PKT culture and grow us as a company.”

Bode also is constantly working on herself, personally and professionally, and continues to elevate the company’s leaders by entrusting them with projects but stays involved and serves as a sounding board for ideas when needed.

Describing her professional and personal sides, Bode says there’s not really a difference.

“I’ve tried really hard to keep that fluid,” she says, adding husband Kraig, who owns NobleVest Private Wealth, is her biggest supporter. “I’m not into anything that feels fake, so just trying to be authentic and have this be a place where people are choosing to work here as much as I choose them.”

Still, as Bode looks to maintain that work-life balance, her leadership team has afforded her more flexibility this year to spend time with her children, Ryann, 13, and Hudson, 10.

“Luckily, we can do a lot remotely,” Bode says, noting for example she’ll occasionally take Zoom calls in her car while picking up the kids from school.

However, there’s also challenges at times as her presence in the office has been scaled down.

“When we’ve gotten into additional management, it’s been really hard for people that have directly reported to me to then have to go be managed by someone else,” she says. “Trying to figure out how you balance that and can still grow has been a bit of a challenge. I don’t think I’ve nailed it yet, but again, a lot of it goes back to communication and then trying to have an open-door policy.”

Noting she and Kraig are on the road most weekends for either dance competitions for Ryann or soccer tournaments for Hudson, the family still finds free time at Table Rock Lake. She and Kraig also golf at Millwood Golf and Racquet Club whenever they get the chance.

“The more I understand the game and where my weaknesses are, the worse I get,” she says with a laugh. “It’s pretty fun. I can hang with the boys, so that’s nice.”

As Pearson-Kelly’s revenue is tracking ahead of 2024’s record total, Bode says she’s in talks with several companies for potential growth opportunities. Still, she’s never been heavily drawn to acquisitions purely for growing her business.

“I think it’s way easier to hire great talent and look at markets that are similar, have a similar clientele to what you’ve been successful with and grow organically, but never say never,” she says.