Nistworks, a fledgling business based in Carrollton, is growing quickly despite the gloomy economy and President David Nist is aware of just how lucky he is.

“Right now in the industry, it’s keeping the doors open is the new up,” Nist said. “I’m feeling pretty privileged to be growing the way we are.”

The company, which he started in Carroll County two years ago, has at least tripled its customer base to about 80 companies in the last year, he said. His focus on security is one reason he thinks people come to him. The average business person who runs a company from a bricks and mortar location can be a little afraid to enter the Web, a territory that is more intangible — it’s basically air. His job is to make sure that the person feels secure in taking that plunge.

Since he started working in the area, Nist has come across security breaches and believes security is lacking in this geographical area.

“We’re pretty much security paranoid,” Nist said. “There’s a real lack of security on both the Web site side, the e-mail side and the networks and PC side.”

The Internet-based business is for the most part self-policed right now. The laws have not kept up with technology and that leaves security up to the companies like Nistworks that do hosting and e-mail to do the security for their customers. He sets up sentinels for e-mail and Web sites for all his customers right away to make sure they are secure.

“In my opinion, someday it’s going to be a fiduciary responsibility but, for right now, it’s not,” Nist said. “If someone is attacking one of my customers, it’s my responsibility to stop this thing.”

This is not Nist’s first foray into the information technology business. He had owned a business in Oklahoma City providing similar services to what he is doing here plus offering Internet service for seven years in the 1990s. However, when a tornado came through in 1999 and destroyed huge sections of the city, it also took out his business. He tried to rebuild, but there was no way to recoup with all the damage to the area.

“The market wasn’t there,” Nist said. “I went from 1,800 customers down to less than 300 in about six weeks over there.”

So, he and his wife Sharon decided to move to the Atlanta area, where his wife hails from. Nist took a job at Greenway Medical Technologies 10 years ago and has been in Carrollton ever since. He worked for Greenway for five years, but he was hoping to get out on his own again. He started doing consultant work and two years ago set up an office at the Burson Center. He brought some company accounts with him from his consulting work – places like M&M, Turner Sports Interactive, Nascar.com. And he’s picking up some large local accounts such as Carroll County, Gradick Communications, International Leadership Institute, Aqua Flow Products.

Steve Gradick began working with Nistworks last fall. Nistworks handles the company’s networking at its three studios, Web sites and e-mail.

“We’re very happy to see David’s success in the community,” Gradick said.

Gradick decided to move his accounts to Nistworks because of Nist’s experience with IT.

“He has a wealth of knowledge having been in the IT business for many years,” he said. “He really brings that knowledge to our community environment and that kind of knowledge you may only get with a larger metro type operation.”

Nistworks has expanded to five employees including Nist’s two sons, Chris and Andrew, and he is looking to add two sales positions and later a couple of marketing positions. So far, the company has just been growing by word of mouth and now he feels ready to start being a little more aggressive in garnering new customers. As more and more companies are trimming their IT departments because they can no longer afford them, he wants to be in a position to pick up that work.

“We’re missing that market – that is such a rich, rich market right now,” Nist said. “We’ve had zero marketing effort, zero sales effort and it’s time for us to grow in that direction.”

The company is debt free and he wants it to stay that way. He has to be careful how much money he puts out for expansion and it has to pay for itself. When he started at the Burson Center, his rent afforded him an office, a phone line and provided him with a snapshot of the business community in Carroll County.

Nist has been impressed with the business community he’s found in Carrollton. He’s been surprised to travel to the end of a dirt road to find some of these companies and once he sees their operation to realize they are working well beyond the county boundaries, some even internationally.

“All these little companies that you wouldn’t think are anybody are actually somebody,” Nist said.

He started Nistworks on his own, hoping that someday his sons would join him. He thought he might have to move into Atlanta to grow to where he wanted to be, but the county has really offered him much more room to expand than he realized.

Now that he has moved to the larger offices on Cable Industrial Boulevard, he’s ready and anxious for more expansion. He knows what he’s doing, because he’s done it before. After seven years of being his own boss in Oklahoma City, he’s also happy to be on his own again.

“You get it in your blood,” Nist said.

Nistworks just moved to new offices in Carrollton at 270 Cable Industrial Way.