Fighting Cancer, CEO Finds Channel Of Support

These three words, uttered two and a half years ago, are now permanently etched into the heart, mind and life of Joe Heinzen: "You have leukemia."

It's not a sentence one ever expects to hear, let alone someone who has long prided himself on being one of the fittest 58-year-olds on the planet: a biker, a runner, a tennis player, an athlete in better shape than most men decades younger. But cancer plays no favorites, offers no preferential treatment. It happens, it's never fair and there are no good answers to the question "Why me?"

For Heinzen, CEO of e-Convergence Solutions, a small specialty distributor based in Centreville, Va., that question has been especially haunting. Why him? Why now? When he was diagnosed, Heinzen had a new wife, a young daughter, three grown children, three grandchildren and a growing business that he had carefully crafted to take advantage of his vision of where the IT industry was headed. There just had to be some mistake.

"I'd always been perfectly healthy. Terribly fit. It never occurred to me that I could get sick. That was for other people," Heinzen said.

To make matters worse, doctors told Heinzen he had acute myeloid leukemia, one of the worst variations and one that historically did not have a great survival rate for men his age.

Paradoxically, Heinzen considers himself both fortunate and unfortunate to get leukemia when he did. He had developed pneumonia and became chronically sick and tired at the time. He credits his family doctor for taking extra steps rather than just treating it as a minor ailment.

"I would have died very quickly if it was not caught. They sent me right to the hospital and I had to start chemotherapy right away," Heinzen said.

In Heinzen's favor, all the years spent honing his athletic skills had also developed a strong and firm mind. This, he decided, was not going to be the end.

"I said, screw it. I'm going to beat it. I had just gotten married. My daughter was 6 years old. I had a business to run. There was no way it was going to beat me. That's just the way I was built. It never entered my mind that it would beat me," he said.

Heinzen started chemotherapy in September 2008 and finished two rounds. His remission, however, was short-lived as doctors found abnormalities in his blood work and he was sent to live at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

He was considered a candidate for a stem cell transplant but was told that men of his age typically don't survive, even if a donor could be found. Two of Heinzen's siblings were found to be matches and he made the decision to go forward with that treatment in April 2009.

Three months later, Heinzen was well enough to return home to Virginia. But once again he suffered a serious setback and returned to the hospital.

Next: Help From Unexpected Sources

"Unlike liver and kidney [transplant] failure where your body attacks the new organ, the stem cell attacks your body. They actually called my kids and said your dad is not going to make it," Heinzen said. "But I told my kids I'm not dying."

He recovered and left the hospital for good in October 2009 weighing 131 pounds, 70 pounds less than when he was first diagnosed, and unable to walk. The long road to recovery was only just beginning.

Of course no one, not even the Joe Heinzens of the world, can beat cancer alone. It takes a collective effort and support by friends and family to help the patient in a multitude of ways. In Joe's case, it came first from his sister's stem cells and his wife, Ruth Sorrells, who is also e-Convergence Solutions' vice president of sales.

"Ruth was by my side under the most impossible circumstances. She suffered many hardships. For instance, we figured out one day that she slept in my room for over 200 nights in a plastic-covered LazyBoy chair," Heinzen said.

Obviously, the support from family and a spouse is no surprise. But soon after he got sick, Heinzen also found support -- and inspiration-- from an unexpected source: vendors and reseller customers that he had cultivated over his five years with e-Convergence Solutions, people that in many cases he had never even met in person.

"They say this industry is all about relationships, and I can tell you that is absolutely true. I've had some great people step up for me and really help keep the company afloat when they did not have to," Heinzen said.

Count Hillel Sackstein, president and CEO of Virtual Graffiti, an Irvine, Calif.-based solution provider, as a friend even though the two have never met.

"We've been doing business for about five or six years now and we've only talked via e-mail or phone," Sackstein said. "He distributes one of the vendors that we sell, Safend. I really like working with Joe. He's assisted us with deals, been very proactive when it's come to renewals. He makes sure we contact customers. All around, he's really, really good to work with."

Small solution providers often have to rely on their wits and will to be successful. In some cases, that means counting on help from resources they can't afford or don't want to have internally. Those relationships, good solid relationships, can be the backbone of that success. So when you find a good one, you're not apt to let it go, Sackstein said.

"This industry is all about relationships: who you know, how you're connected, who you've supported in the past, how you work together on deals, how you take care of customers. It's very often come down to not who has the best price or availability, but who you know can give you the service and who you know you can count on," he said.

Heinzen is one of those people, Sackstein said.

Next: E-Mails From A Hospital Bed

"Joe mentioned a few years ago now that he may be a little more unresponsive [because of the leukemia]. But through that time, we were happy to continue to supporting him. Even when he was in the hospital for a lot of that time," Sackstein said.

Incredibly, Heinzen was still answering e-mails and processing quotes with a laptop from his hospital bed, despite Ruth's constant admonishing, said Sackstein and other solution providers.

Ben Campbell, senior director of sales operations at Safend, a Tel Aviv-based security vendor with U.S. headquarters in Philadelphia, remembers telling Heinzen not to put his business in front of his health. A request that pretty much fell on deaf ears, he said.

"We said we know what you're working on and what's in the pipeline. It was very easy for us to help. For as long as he was out there [in Seattle], we would do our best via e-mail and infrequent conversations just to make sure things were getting covered," Campbell said. "He couldn't even see. He was cranking up the fonts. But whenever he felt like he could work, he'd work. We'd get these e-mails at crazy times like 3 a.m., but he was addressing things that needed to be addressed."

Heinzen added a new cell phone number in Seattle because his Virginia number was having connectivity issues, remembers Campbell. "It's amazing that he had the resources to still get a purchase order in, to still get bills paid. It's a testament to him and his approach to the channel and business," Campbell said.

Gerry Printz, CEO of 2020 Innovations, a Brandon, Miss.-based VAR, also has never met Heinzen in person. But Heinzen was always willing to do a virtual demo for one of Printz's customers or help him learn more about a new product. So when Heinzen got sick, Printz, too, was there to help in any way he could.

"We just tried to be more self-sufficient when he was going through all the things he was doing. His wife did a really good job keeping people notified on Joe's progress. It was pretty amazing that he did demos from his bed, practically. He never gave up or stopped working. It was just amazing. He was quite motivating," Printz said. "Joe keeps us focused on certain things. It was an easy decision to do business with him."

When ioimage, a video appliance vendor, was just starting out, finding someone that would extend credit terms, let alone promote its products, was a challenge. Heinzen helped in both regards, said John Whiteman, vice president of strategic programs at DVTel, which purchased ioimage in March 2010.

"We had developed a solid relationship and he was part of our family by that time [when he got sick]," Whiteman said. "During his uncertain times, we became very flexible with payments. We know what he was going through financially. We flew people around the country to meet with his VARs and prospects to keep the business going. He earned my respect. I trust him."

Next: Long Road To Recovery

Mark Lawson has perhaps the most unique business relationship with Heinzen and e-Convergence Solutions, both as reseller and vendor. Lawson is founder and president of Information Security Networks, a St. Louis-based VAR, and director of sales at HexaGrid Computing, a cloud-based data center application developer that the distributor now carries.

"When I started out I was like, 'How do I get credit? How do I get going?' Joe gave it to me," Lawson said. "Joe helped me out and I wasn't going to let him down when he needed help. We stuck together. Now he's out there doing Tweets and moving his resellers to the cloud. I've seen more enthusiasm from him than I've seen in a long time."

Life is still not easy for Heinzen. He's been in and out of the hospital for a viral eye infection, nosebleeds and other assorted maladies. It's only been in the past six months that he's been able to concentrate on work. E-Convergence Solutions now has about half the revenue it did before Heinzen got sick, but he feels like the company is rebuilding some momentum.

"We've been moving into the cloud. I've always been reluctant to do so because of security concerns. I still have those concerns, but I believe there's a way to mitigate that risk with some of the things we're going to do. I'm very encouraged by the future," he said.

"He was in tough shape for about a half year, it was really bad," said Safend's Campbell. "When you talk to him now, he sounds like Joe. When you read his e-mails, you know he's back. He's cranking."

Physically, Heinzen might be a shadow of his former self. But the voice is still "The Voice." A booming, authoritative, yet warm cadence that declares, "I always thought I was immortal. I probably still think I am."

"I'm still here, and I'm still in charge." Lest anyone think otherwise.