Entrepreneur Spotlight: Lift It Rentals Founder, Paul Adkison

About Lift It Rentals, LLC Founder, Paul Adkison

One of the greatest gifts a person can offer society is to take their passions or interests and do something powerful to benefit the greater good. That's what Paul Adkison, a serial entrepreneur who founded Lift It Rentals, LLC, and countless other successful companies, has spent nearly 25 years doing since launching his first mobile technology solutions company, IQMax. 

Since graduating with a bachelor's degree in finance and marketing from East Carolina University and completing graduate studies in engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology over 20 years ago, Paul Adkison has founded many noteworthy enterprises. Some of his more notable entrepreneurial ventures have been: 

• IQMax, Inc.: A mobile healthcare technology platform adopted by big-name medical care conglomerates like Children's Hospital, Novartis, the Mayo Clinic, and more than 150 other entities to aid with the provision of mobile medicine 
• ZABRA, Inc.: A social media monitoring technology that allows parents to receive alerts along with copies of any video or audio content their kids share on social media
• Lift It Rentals, LLC: Lift It Rentals is a telehandler acquisition company that finances and rents this heavy equipment to warehouses as well asand also agricultural and construction companies nationwide
• Pivot Parking, LLC: The premier provider of managed parking services offerings for privately owned and operated parking facilities

In addition to the entrepreneurial ventures listed above, Paul Adkison and his Charlotte-based umbrella company, Co-X Holdings, have new, exciting projects in the pipeline, including a $28 million Greenville, NC hotel development and $20 million SpringHill Suites grand opening happening this month in Cheraw, SC.

How Paul Adkison Grew Lift It Rentals, LLC From the Ground Up

When Paul Adkison founded Lift It Rentals more than a decade ago, his new company only had two telehandler machines available for rental. Since its founding, the heavy equipment rental company has acquired nearly 100 Merlo telehandlers. This strategic step has been instrumental in expanding Lift It Rentals' reach and profitability. Lift It Rentals, LLC now regularly rents out to construction crews, farming operations, and warehouses nationwide. 

Attributes That Have Aided Paul Adkison on His Successful Entrepreneurial Journey

Paul Adkison's service mindset and his heart for entrepreneurship have been instrumental in his founding of Lift It Rentals, LLC and Co-X Holdings' other commercial successes. 

Lifelong Learning and Giving Back to Others

He is a lifelong learner who believes we best learn new things by rolling up our sleeves and doing them ourselves. In recent years, this mentality led to him joining the Business Advisory Council at East Carolina University (ECU) School of Business, where Paul Adkison regularly shares the insight he's gained from the triumphs and tribulations he's weathered as a serial entrepreneur. This seat on the council has also allowed Paul to bring ECU professors and students alike into the fold on his biggest projects, respectively, offering them nuanced opportunities to showcase their talents and options for practical work experience. 

However, Paul Adkison's natural curiosity and unending quest for knowledge have been present since the onset of his career. This inclination set the foundation for him going to work for some of the largest international technology companies early in his career. To that end, it didn't take long before he noticed those tech firms' lack of investment in identifying problems and devising innovative solutions to address them. That's when he identified the purpose that still motivates him today -- to harness emergent technology with the goal of improving the way we all live.

Facing Challenges Head-On and Learning From Successes and Failures

Given this realization of his "why" early on in his career, it shouldn't come as a surprise to learn that Paul Adkison also believes in stepping up to challenges instead of letting them serve as impediments that stop us from doing things we're passionate about. This refreshing mindset, whereby he views successes and failures as teaching moments, has greatly fueled his relentless entrepreneurial spirit that's sure to result in his continued creation of many other entrepreneurial ventures just as successful as Lift It Rentals, LLC and his many other companies have been.