Ask Joe Helleny to describe himself as a Herrin High School student and he doesn't hesitate.

"Geek. Dork."

Five-foot-one and 105 pounds as a freshman. Four years of golf, no fancy car, weekends spent playing cards. He graduated in 1995 with more curiosity than direction and switched majors four times at John A. Logan before eventually earning degrees in Management Information Systems and Marketing.

Nobody would have predicted what came next.

The instinct to solve things, however, had deep roots. Joe's great-grandfather Joseph arrived in America from Syria in the early 1900s and started the way many immigrants did — on foot, door to door, selling soaps and linens to farmhouses too far from town to shop otherwise. He wasn't just selling products. He was solving a problem. When he eventually opened a storefront in Herrin, he kept solving new ones, listening to what the community needed and adjusting as those needs changed. Helleny's served Herrin for over 80 years — not because it stayed the same, but because it never stopped paying attention.

That instinct passed through every generation until it reached Joe, who absorbed it less as a business strategy than as a way of seeing the world.

His early twenties offered the first real test of it. Out one night, he noticed something simple: a bar with no ATM. The owner was too busy to deal with it. Joe offered to handle it, borrowed against his car, bought his first machine, and installed it.

It worked. Really well.

One solution grew into a business. And that business eventually landed him at a breakfast table across from Williamson County Sheriff Tom Cundiff, who was describing a government payment process so tangled and slow it was tying up staff and frustrating everyone it touched. Joe drove home quietly, turning it over.

"I just kept asking myself, how do I use what I know to solve this?"

He went home, made notes, and called on two people he already knew and trusted — fellow Herrin High graduates Jeremiah Reagan and Lael Griffith. Jeremiah had been building websites for Fortune 500 companies. Lael had the operational vision to take something from concept to launch and keep building it from there. Joe had noticed both of them long before there was a reason to need them. When he brought the idea back to Sheriff Cundiff, the response was simple.

"If you build it, I'm your first client."

They were operational in six months. The company became CourtMoney — a payment technology company that now serves municipalities across the country, helping cities and towns run more efficiently and serve their residents better. Twenty-five years later, it remains one of the things Joe is most proud of. It started with noticing something that wasn't working, grew because they never stopped asking how to make it better, and launched because of a relationship built long before anyone knew it would matter.

Then life redirected him. When Joe lost his father unexpectedly, the family business needed someone to step in. He did — not because it was the calculated move, but because it was the right one. He and his wife Nina built it into one of the most respected companies of its kind. Joe currently serves as Chairman of the National Portable Storage Association and has been recognized nationally for his contributions to the industry.

"What looked like a detour became one of the most defining chapters of my life," he said. "Sometimes the things that redirect us are the things that reveal us."

For Joe and Nina, success has never been a finish line. They established the Joe and Nina Helleny Foundation to provide resources to those in need across Herrin and surrounding southern Illinois communities — the same communities that sustained this family across four generations. As their businesses grow and reach new communities, they plan to carry that mission with them.

When he talks to students, the advice is direct: stay close to the people around you. The person sitting next to you at lunch today could be your business partner, your colleague, your first client. Pay attention to what they're good at. Stay connected. Joe didn't have to look far when the moment arrived — he called on people he'd known since these hallways.

"Your network is being built right now," he said. "Whether you realize it or not."

Joe Helleny walked out of Herrin High School in 1995 with no particular plan and a lot of questions. What he had, even then, was a way of seeing the world that asked how this could be better every time something wasn't working.

Four generations later, the family instinct is still running.