March 16, 2026

Steve DeVries, Certified Business/Executive Coach with Focal Point & founder of DeVries Enterprises

Steve DeVries, Certified Business/Executive Coach with Focal Point & founder of DeVries Enterprises
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Steve DeVries has dedicated his career to transforming companies into high-performing, future-ready businesses. As a Certified Business and Executive Coach for 25+ years, he has worked with technology-based OEMs, manufacturers, & service providers to improve team performance and strategic execution.
He specializes in equipping leaders with the tools and strategies to navigate complex challenges: developing people, improving financial management, & often preparing for organizational succession.

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WEBVTT

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The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are

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solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not

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choosing W four CY Radio.

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Churchill said, those who failed to learn from history are

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condemned to repeat it. Kevin helen n believes that certainly

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applies to business. Welcome to Winning Business Radio here at

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W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com

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and now your host, Kevin.

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Helena, Thanks for joining in again today, everybody. I'm Kevin

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Hallanan and welcome back to Winning Business TV and Radio

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on W four cy DO. And of course we're streaming

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live on talk for the number four TV dot com

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and we're live on Facebook and that's at Winning Business Radio.

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And of course we're available in podcasts after the live

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show on wherever you see, your see or hear your content.

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That's YouTube, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple Again. The list goes on

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anywhere you listen to your podcast or radio content. The

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mission of winning business radio and TV, as regular viewers

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and listeners know, is to offer insights and advice to

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help people avoid the mistakes of others, to learn best practices.

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Those are the how tos, the what toos, the what

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not tos. Also and to be challenged and hopefully to

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be inspired by the successes of others. Those others are

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consultants and coaches, advisors, authors, founders and owners and entrepreneurs,

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people with expertise. But you know, virtually every successful person

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I've ever had a chance to talk to has had

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some form of failure in their lives and careers. So,

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as I said, say, every week, while we all have

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to get our knees skinned once in a while, I'm

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driven to keep those scrapes from needing major surgery. Let's

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endeavor to learn from history so we don't repeat it.

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I've spent the better part of my career equipping businesses

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to grow from solopreneurs to small and medium sized companies

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all the way up to the fortune fifty. I've seen

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some of those companies win and to varying degrees. I've

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seen some fail I've had the opportunity to rub elbows

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with some of the highest performing people around and with

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some who probably should have found other professions. And in

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my own businesses, I've had lots of success, but some

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failures too. I like to think I've learned a lot

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from those experiences. So yeah, you're going to hear from me,

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but mostly you'll hear from our guests. Those experts, consultants, coaches, advisors, authors,

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founders and owners and entrepreneurs. And today my guest is

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Steve Devrees, certified Business and executive coach with Focal Point

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and founder of Devirees Enterprises. Here's Steve's bio. Steve Devrees

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has dedicated his career to transforming organizations into high performing,

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future ready businesses. As a certified business and executive coach

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with over twenty five years of experience, he's worked with

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countless technology based OEMs, manufacturing companies, and service providers to

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improve team performance and strategic execution. Steve specializes in equipping

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leaders with the tools and strategies to navigate complex challenges,

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whether it's developing leaders, improving financial management, or preparing for

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organizational succession. His hands on approach helps clients see tangible results,

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often within months. His clients have achieved fifty excuse me,

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twenty to fifty percent profitability increases in just twelve months,

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twenty five percent in sales growth after implementing tailored strategies,

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in fifty percent reductions, and leadership turnover. Steve loves mentoring

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and up and coming leaders to maximize their impact. He's

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an avid outdoors enthusiast, particularly in the New Hampshire lakes

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and mountains. He enjoys volunteering his time as a coach

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in youth sports and advising entrepreneurial students. Steve's favorite quote

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is success is not final, failure is not fatal. It's

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the courage to continue that counts Winston Churchill, man of

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My Own Heart. He earned his BS in Business Administration

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and Management at UMS Lowell, as well as his MBA

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in management. Steve coaches because he enjoys helping people succeed.

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He finds the most meeting in supporting leaders through tough moments,

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when decisions feel heavy, pressures high, and clarity is hard

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to find. Coaching allows Steve to bring a calming, experienced

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presence to those situations, helping leaders think clearly enact with confidence.

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Clients value his perspective, steadiness and accountability. Many say they

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begin anticipating the questions he will ask and the standards

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he will hold them to, evidence that the work has

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become part of how they lead. Steve resides in Windham,

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New Hampshire, with his wife Kim, and their two children,

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Page and Sam. Steve. Welcome to Winning Business Radio.

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Thank you so much for having Kevin. I really appreciate it.

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You got it. I know you're busy and I appreciate it.

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So tell us about your family. Start with you wife, Kim.

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Yeah. So, Kim and I met when we were both

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attending Umassilole one hundred years ago. Some people know this.

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Our first date was on Valentine's Day. Cool, and I

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knew from that moment, like that first date, I was done.

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We were engaged less than a year later and married

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about a year and a half after that. And it's

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been well, I will say, mostly smooth sailing of marriages ever,

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but smooth sailing all the way since. So this year

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will be year number anniversary twenty seven.

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Oh, congratulations. And does she work?

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She does. She's director of project management, and I guess

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the right hand person for the COO of a Boulder,

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Colorado based pet food company.

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Very cool, very cool. Yeah, and your kids page is

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twenty three SAMs eighteen.

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Tell us about them so pages. She is off doing

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the adulting thing, as she likes to say. So. She

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lives in Boston, graduated from the University of New England

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a little over a year ago, and you know, yeah,

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it's gorgeous up there, and she she is making her

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way as a young adult. And my son Sam, who

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is a freshman at Plymouth State University, he's he's on

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spring break this week, living the life of luxury. Uh,

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one floor below me right now. I can hear him

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talking to his friends as we speak.

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That's funny, that's funny. Uh. They like the outdoors too, absolutely.

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Yeah. We have a we have a boat that we

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we take out up on one of asaki and and

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you know, it's just it's lots of day trips. But

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you know, we'll parley that into a one week stay

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at a at an airbnb somewhere up there, and the

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whole family comes up and they bring their friends and

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and we have a good time, and you know, we'll

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we'll always do the outdoor things, the the hiking and

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voting and whatever comes our way.

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Yeah, my family and another family cross the street from us.

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We lived in Midfield, and the two families got together

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and bought a big old farmhouse on twenty Route twenty

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five between Plymouth and Romney and Wentworth. And so I

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spent a ton of time as a kid. I loved

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New Hampshire up there, you know.

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So yeah, I mean my childhood was all like the

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summer vacations were all one of asaki or or there

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was a period of time at Newfound Lake as well.

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So I just I love the New Hampshire Lakes region.

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It's love them both. Newfound we had we had a

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piece of land on Newfound that my parents didn't end

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up developing, the end up selling it, but we were

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going to be there. We did swim there a lot.

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So all right, So you and Bill ricka Mass tell

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us about the town and what it was like to

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grow up there.

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Oh geez, what can I say about Bill Rica So

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Merrimack Valley town, you know, I mean for me, it

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was kind of a normal upbringing. I had my crew

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of friends, you know. We uh, we hung out all

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over town playing at a lot of basketball together, a

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lot of pick up sports, right, I mean football, baseball,

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all that good stuff, driving around, getting into a little

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bit of trouble here and there, right, that was all

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part of it. I mean bill Rica itself is I

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think it. For a long time it was very very

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much a blue collar kind of town, and I think

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it's morphed into more of a mix of blue collar,

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white collar types of professions, tons of industry there. Funny enough. So,

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I mean I had my first, you know, first real

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job there in bill Rica. And you know, when I

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graduated UMass Lowell, I ended up working at a business

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in bill Rica for nineteen years. That was not five

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minutes from my parents' house where I grew up. And

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I couldn't get out of bill Rica for a period

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of time. I couldn't get out of Billrica even if

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I tried. It was it was kind of crazy.

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Just when you thought you got out, Yeah, they pulled

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me back in, all right? And how did you make

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it to wind Windams, a nice town in New Hampshire.

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Yeah. So, as I mentioned earlier, my wife and I

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met at UMass loll And so when we when we graduated,

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we ended up buying our first house in Loll just

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before just before we got married, and then sold that

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house and bought another house in Loll. We were trying

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to move back to the original neighborhood where we started.

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We made a mistake in terms of the location. You

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know that when when you hear people talk about location, location, location,

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they are one hundred and twenty percent right, because I

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lived in a in a new house on a street

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in a neighborhood that we didn't absolutely love and we

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couldn't wait to get out of there, and when the

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housing market crashed, we ended up we were underwater on

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that house. We ended up paying to get out of it.

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And we were trying to move back to the neighborhood

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where we had started because that's where we really wanted

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to be and couldn't find the type of house that

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we wanted. We had some other family dynamics going on

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that were basically pointing to us to leave Loll, and

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we had looked on and off over the years in

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southern New Hampshire because we both really liked New Hampshire

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and so the time, you know, at that point you

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could buy low into into Windom, Yes, you can't really

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do that now, but at that time we were able

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to buy Low and Windom and it's been great for us.

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I mean, great school system, great neighborhoods. Uh, you know,

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met a lot of really really good friends here, so

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it's it's been good to us.

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Nice all right. So now consider high school years, maybe

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early college. Who were your early influencers.

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Oh, I'm going to tell you about people that no

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one's ever heard of before unless you were you. You

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were in the types of businesses the the early I

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was very lucky. I tell people this a lot. My

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early influencers were actually the bosses that I worked for

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as a as a teenage kid. I was very fortunate

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to work for some really smart people, good people, people

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who had the patience to show me the ropes. I

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fell in love with business at a young age, and

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I knew I wanted to be in business leadership, probably

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when I was fifteen years old. Very first job, first

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w two job. Anyway, I worked at a liquor store

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and I worked in the back where I sorted all

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of the bottles and cans that people would return, you know,

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for the nickel. And I mean it was just a

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perfect job for a you know, a young high school kid,

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but it was it was nasty, and I was, you know,

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cleaning toilets for the employees and taking the trash out

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and doing all these things. But the guy who owned

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the store, his name's Vinnie Straziri. I think he's since

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sold the store and retired. But I was in and

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out of the little corner store next to the liquor

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store all the time as a kid, and he approached

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me one day and said, you need a job, and

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as I heard you looking, and I said, yeah, I

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have been looking for a job. So he hired me,

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and he taught me so much about business because I

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would finish up my work and I would go and

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see him. I'd see all these papers out all over

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his desk, and I was always very curious about it,

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and i'd be asking, you know, the general ledger books

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and purchase orders and packing slips and all these different things,

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and I would be asking him questions, probably to the

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point where I annoyed him, but I just kind of

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loved how it all went together, and so that got

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me curious about business. And then I moved on from there.

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And I won't take you through my entire pre college resume,

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but suffice to say, each stop of the way, I

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met managers who really wanted to take me under their

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wing and teach me different things. And it built my

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love of business management and leadership. You know, for many years,

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right through college, I had all kinds of part time

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jobs through college. I just got lucky, you know, I

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got lucky in that I was exposed to so many

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good people. We hear about bad bosses all the time,

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and I see it with my clients sometimes. I see

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the bad bosses within their organizations and I see the

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impact that it has on the people that report to them.

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And honestly, that's who I coach for. I coach for

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those people who wake up every day and slog off

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to work because you know, they need the paycheck, but

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they're miserable, and it's because they're working for a poorly

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run team or a poorly run company. And I want

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them to have a good experience as much as I

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want the owners of the business to do well. So

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and that all came from learning from these people who

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had been in business, and I was lucky enough to

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be exposed to love that.

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All right, we're going to take our first commercial break

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right here. We will be back in one minute, everybody,

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We're going to be back in about sixty seconds with

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Steve Debrees.

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And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helena,

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presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in

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mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again

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is Kevin Helena.

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All right, we are back with Steve Davirees, certified business

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and executive coach with Focal Point and founder of Debrees Enterprises. Enterprises. Sorry,

283
00:15:52.159 --> 00:15:55.080
how did you make it to DJ Instruments? And I

284
00:15:55.120 --> 00:15:57.840
know looked like there are a couple iterations. It was

285
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purchased maybe twice.

286
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Yeah, So so DJ Instruments was a design and manufacturing

287
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company for custom sensors. How I found them? It's actually

288
00:16:09.799 --> 00:16:12.120
kind of a fun story. So you know, when you're

289
00:16:12.159 --> 00:16:15.120
in college, you get these job faares, right, So at

290
00:16:15.200 --> 00:16:17.600
UMass loll it was no different. They had the job fares.

291
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Lots of big companies looking for, you know, young graduates

292
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that they can kind of chew up and spit out

293
00:16:24.320 --> 00:16:27.320
and maybe wanted to stick. And I didn't want to

294
00:16:27.320 --> 00:16:29.639
do that. I was working for Putnam Investments at the

295
00:16:29.679 --> 00:16:33.480
time that I graduated and they were offering me work

296
00:16:33.519 --> 00:16:35.679
and I just I didn't want to be there. I

297
00:16:35.679 --> 00:16:37.360
could see I was just going to be a number.

298
00:16:37.799 --> 00:16:40.799
I was looking for something smaller, where I felt like

299
00:16:40.879 --> 00:16:43.799
I could learn a lot and make a difference and

300
00:16:43.840 --> 00:16:46.720
not just kind of crank along as a you know,

301
00:16:46.759 --> 00:16:49.200
as a as a cog in the wheel. So I

302
00:16:49.279 --> 00:16:52.320
went to the career services office at UMass loll and

303
00:16:52.360 --> 00:16:54.799
I said, listen, all these all these job fare, big

304
00:16:54.840 --> 00:16:57.519
companies that they're not doing it for me. What else

305
00:16:57.919 --> 00:17:00.080
is there? There must be something? And they said, oh, yeah,

306
00:17:00.120 --> 00:17:02.720
there is. And you know, this was before the Internet

307
00:17:02.840 --> 00:17:06.839
was really you know, a big thing, so dating myself certainly.

308
00:17:07.240 --> 00:17:10.880
But the woman came along and handed me this thick

309
00:17:11.000 --> 00:17:14.559
binder boom, drops it on the table and says, these

310
00:17:14.559 --> 00:17:18.200
are all local companies looking to hire. Flip through this

311
00:17:18.279 --> 00:17:22.480
and see if anything catches your attention. So I sat

312
00:17:22.559 --> 00:17:25.359
in that career services office for I don't know how long,

313
00:17:25.839 --> 00:17:30.480
flipping one page after another, reading job descriptions. About halfway

314
00:17:30.519 --> 00:17:33.440
through I read this one from DJ Instruments and it

315
00:17:33.519 --> 00:17:37.279
was for a purchasing manager role. And I read through

316
00:17:37.279 --> 00:17:40.039
it and it just it spoke to me. And I said,

317
00:17:40.079 --> 00:17:43.920
that's it, that's the one. So I responded, I interviewed,

318
00:17:43.920 --> 00:17:46.079
and I got the job and I was there for

319
00:17:46.160 --> 00:17:46.839
nineteen years.

320
00:17:47.000 --> 00:17:52.039
Wow, with progressing a responsibility. You look like you left

321
00:17:52.039 --> 00:17:53.000
as VP COO.

322
00:17:53.920 --> 00:17:57.079
Yeah. So started out in purchasing and I had one

323
00:17:57.119 --> 00:17:59.079
person reporting to me. I had to put all kinds

324
00:17:59.119 --> 00:18:03.000
of things into place. They had purchased an MRP system

325
00:18:03.119 --> 00:18:05.759
about a year before I got there, and they tinkered

326
00:18:05.799 --> 00:18:07.440
with it but never did anything. So I had to

327
00:18:07.519 --> 00:18:10.960
learn what an MRP system was and how to build

328
00:18:11.000 --> 00:18:14.160
it up, because he handed that to me as a project,

329
00:18:14.200 --> 00:18:17.440
as well as getting all of their inventory under control.

330
00:18:17.880 --> 00:18:21.920
Inventory was all over the place. There was no control.

331
00:18:21.960 --> 00:18:25.880
They had little index cards where they supposedly kept counts

332
00:18:25.920 --> 00:18:28.440
and stuff coming in and stuff going out. It wasn't

333
00:18:28.519 --> 00:18:32.160
controlled terribly well at all. Did well with that. I

334
00:18:32.279 --> 00:18:34.240
probably made a few enemies along the way for the

335
00:18:34.279 --> 00:18:38.279
people who liked having free access to the materials. But

336
00:18:38.359 --> 00:18:41.359
we got it ountder control. We started reducing our overall

337
00:18:41.359 --> 00:18:44.599
footprint in terms of the amount that we had in

338
00:18:44.720 --> 00:18:50.240
inventory and built up the MRP system. And then the

339
00:18:50.279 --> 00:18:54.039
owner who was my boss, asked me to take on

340
00:18:55.079 --> 00:18:58.440
more of an operations leadership role. So now I had

341
00:18:58.680 --> 00:19:01.000
all those people who I had ticked off that you know,

342
00:19:01.119 --> 00:19:04.039
I took all their inventory away and made them ask

343
00:19:04.160 --> 00:19:07.839
nicely for it. They now reported to me and did

344
00:19:07.839 --> 00:19:10.960
that for a couple of years. And then one day

345
00:19:11.000 --> 00:19:14.039
the owner called me, and his name's Mike Testa, another

346
00:19:14.079 --> 00:19:17.279
example of a phenomenal boss that I learned a ton from.

347
00:19:18.119 --> 00:19:19.640
He called me into his office and he said, you

348
00:19:19.680 --> 00:19:21.920
see me parading all these people in suits in and

349
00:19:21.960 --> 00:19:24.319
out of here the last couple of weeks. Said yeah,

350
00:19:24.319 --> 00:19:26.119
what is that all about? He says, well, I've been

351
00:19:26.200 --> 00:19:29.960
I've been interviewing for a general manager or you know,

352
00:19:30.000 --> 00:19:32.440
a chief operating officer. And he said, because I can't

353
00:19:32.480 --> 00:19:35.039
be in the business. His wife had become very sick

354
00:19:35.039 --> 00:19:37.519
and he needed to be with them. Yeah, and he says,

355
00:19:37.880 --> 00:19:41.279
here's the deal. He says, they're all very capable, he says,

356
00:19:41.279 --> 00:19:44.599
but I don't trust them. I trust you. And he

357
00:19:44.640 --> 00:19:48.559
had been grooming me, you know, to to elevate elevate

358
00:19:48.640 --> 00:19:50.759
me in the in the business, and it's what I wanted.

359
00:19:51.799 --> 00:19:54.079
But he literally took the key to the building out

360
00:19:54.119 --> 00:19:56.720
of his pocket and slid it across the desk. And said,

361
00:19:57.960 --> 00:20:01.119
I'm going to promote you. You're in shock arch, it's

362
00:20:01.200 --> 00:20:04.440
your show to run. Lean on the staff because we

363
00:20:04.480 --> 00:20:07.559
had a very seasoned staff there. He said, lean on

364
00:20:07.599 --> 00:20:10.359
the staff, don't screw it up. I'll check in from

365
00:20:10.359 --> 00:20:12.599
time to time. And he got up and he left. Well,

366
00:20:13.079 --> 00:20:16.039
and I sat there with this, Yeah, I mean, it

367
00:20:16.079 --> 00:20:17.960
was it was. It was great that he trusted me,

368
00:20:18.079 --> 00:20:19.839
and it was exactly what I wanted, but it was

369
00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:22.599
exactly the wrong way to that. I that I wanted

370
00:20:22.640 --> 00:20:25.200
to get it right. It felt like I had probably

371
00:20:25.240 --> 00:20:28.519
earned the shot, but not at the expense of, you know,

372
00:20:28.599 --> 00:20:31.920
his family situation. And so I went home that night

373
00:20:31.960 --> 00:20:34.440
and I didn't know how to feel. And I remember

374
00:20:34.480 --> 00:20:37.680
the conversation with with Kim and she said, well, listen,

375
00:20:37.720 --> 00:20:41.720
regardless of how you got here, you're here, and so

376
00:20:41.880 --> 00:20:43.559
what are you going to do with it? And so

377
00:20:43.680 --> 00:20:46.079
I thought a lot that I don't think I slept

378
00:20:46.119 --> 00:20:48.480
a wink that night, and I had to go into

379
00:20:48.519 --> 00:20:51.960
work the next day and address, you know, everybody and

380
00:20:52.240 --> 00:20:54.559
kind of let them know what was going on. And

381
00:20:54.599 --> 00:20:57.880
he was a very very beloved leader in the business.

382
00:20:57.960 --> 00:21:01.400
So you can imagine that I've got these huge shoes

383
00:21:01.440 --> 00:21:04.480
to fill everybody feeling, you know, the pain of what

384
00:21:04.599 --> 00:21:07.480
he and his family are going through. And so that

385
00:21:07.559 --> 00:21:10.279
was that was the first lesson that I had in

386
00:21:11.279 --> 00:21:14.759
becoming a leader and trying to find your own path

387
00:21:14.799 --> 00:21:18.160
and your own And what I learned is you can't

388
00:21:18.200 --> 00:21:21.519
replace those people. You have to find your own path

389
00:21:22.079 --> 00:21:24.200
and do things. You know, you can learn from them,

390
00:21:24.240 --> 00:21:27.759
but you kind of have to do things a little

391
00:21:27.759 --> 00:21:30.039
bit differently. You're just in your own style. And so

392
00:21:30.079 --> 00:21:33.000
that's when I started learning that lesson, and I was

393
00:21:33.039 --> 00:21:35.440
there for a long time. It was sold. He came

394
00:21:35.480 --> 00:21:38.519
back to the business a couple of years later and

395
00:21:38.640 --> 00:21:40.839
he just he wasn't going to stay in the business,

396
00:21:40.839 --> 00:21:43.279
so he decided to sell it, and that's when it

397
00:21:43.319 --> 00:21:46.960
was acquired by a much larger sensor company, dy Nisco.

398
00:21:47.759 --> 00:21:50.119
At the same time, Dynisco was acquired by a Roper,

399
00:21:50.240 --> 00:21:53.720
which is a very large, publicly traded company. So imagine,

400
00:21:54.000 --> 00:21:56.640
you know, I had found my footing as the leader

401
00:21:56.640 --> 00:21:59.240
of this little it felt like a family business, twenty

402
00:21:59.240 --> 00:22:03.079
five people, and now all of a sudden, I have

403
00:22:03.160 --> 00:22:06.720
to deal with six or seven new bosses at Dynisco,

404
00:22:07.279 --> 00:22:10.319
and they have new bosses at Roper and I'm getting

405
00:22:10.359 --> 00:22:13.559
to learn all of them while trying to you know,

406
00:22:14.119 --> 00:22:16.720
steer the ship at Little DJ Instruments. So that was

407
00:22:16.720 --> 00:22:21.359
a really exciting, scary time in my life.

408
00:22:21.920 --> 00:22:23.519
But it talks you about corporate.

409
00:22:24.440 --> 00:22:28.240
Oh boy did it. What was interesting is is that

410
00:22:28.279 --> 00:22:31.960
the the guys who were all the vps and the

411
00:22:31.960 --> 00:22:35.319
president of Dynisco, they all had equity in that business.

412
00:22:35.400 --> 00:22:39.119
So most of them, at different points in times, scattered

413
00:22:39.640 --> 00:22:41.799
right they left the business. There was only one gentleman

414
00:22:41.839 --> 00:22:46.960
that stuck around. He was the engineering leader. And it

415
00:22:47.039 --> 00:22:50.640
was all new leaders. From sales, to marketing, to ops

416
00:22:50.720 --> 00:22:54.119
to to finance. They all came in, so I had

417
00:22:54.160 --> 00:22:58.599
to learn all of them. And then they brought me

418
00:22:58.759 --> 00:23:02.319
into Roper right, and Roper was always doing these you know,

419
00:23:02.400 --> 00:23:05.640
Roper is a portfolio company, so they had, you know,

420
00:23:05.720 --> 00:23:09.759
twenty million dollar businesses, fifty two hundred million dollar businesses,

421
00:23:10.079 --> 00:23:12.119
and here's Little DJ Instruments. At the time, I think

422
00:23:12.160 --> 00:23:15.799
we're probably four or five million in revenue. And I

423
00:23:15.799 --> 00:23:18.920
had but I had to learn how to operate DJ

424
00:23:19.079 --> 00:23:21.680
Instruments as a business unit just like those larger ones,

425
00:23:21.680 --> 00:23:24.680
and present it just like those larger ones. So I

426
00:23:24.799 --> 00:23:30.039
learned how to speak corporate in that environment. But more importantly,

427
00:23:30.079 --> 00:23:33.759
I learned how to take what corporate expected and boil

428
00:23:33.799 --> 00:23:36.000
it down into something that worked for a small business.

429
00:23:36.039 --> 00:23:38.079
And that's what I you know, a lot of what

430
00:23:38.160 --> 00:23:39.359
I do with my clients today.

431
00:23:39.960 --> 00:23:42.079
All right. So then you went over equipment Depot as

432
00:23:42.160 --> 00:23:46.160
general manager. You had another position at Pion as a GM.

433
00:23:46.240 --> 00:23:49.319
Talk about those two companies and roles as GM.

434
00:23:50.319 --> 00:23:58.279
So the Equipment Depot was was actually it was. It

435
00:23:58.319 --> 00:24:01.200
was under a different name at that point in time.

436
00:24:01.440 --> 00:24:05.279
So it was a New England Industrial truck an e

437
00:24:05.640 --> 00:24:12.000
T and any it was a brand forklifts yeah, sorry,

438
00:24:12.160 --> 00:24:16.319
a forklift dealership and so any it had built quite

439
00:24:16.359 --> 00:24:19.880
a reputation in New England as one of the premier

440
00:24:19.920 --> 00:24:23.400
forklift dealers and it was built up by a family.

441
00:24:23.799 --> 00:24:27.880
Family ended up selling it to the manufacturer of the

442
00:24:28.240 --> 00:24:31.920
primary forklift line at the time. It was Nissan. It

443
00:24:31.960 --> 00:24:34.680
became Unit Carriers. I won't bore you with all the

444
00:24:34.720 --> 00:24:39.400
different names, but ultimately the reason that happened is because

445
00:24:40.119 --> 00:24:45.920
the forklift manufacturer was acquired by Mitsubishi. So someone at

446
00:24:45.920 --> 00:24:49.759
Mitsupichee Japan said we want to start to own the

447
00:24:49.799 --> 00:24:52.880
sales channel. The way that whole industry works is you know,

448
00:24:53.480 --> 00:24:55.799
either you own all of your factory stores like a

449
00:24:55.799 --> 00:24:59.039
Crown forklift, right, so it's factory and they own all

450
00:24:59.039 --> 00:25:03.119
this stores, or you sold through independent dealers. Mitsubishi said,

451
00:25:03.160 --> 00:25:06.440
we want to own some dealers and they instructed the

452
00:25:06.519 --> 00:25:10.279
Chicago area based factory go buy a couple of dealerships. Well,

453
00:25:10.319 --> 00:25:14.359
they bought one in Wisconsin out in the Madison not Madison,

454
00:25:15.240 --> 00:25:20.200
doesn't matter in Wisconsin, and one here in New England.

455
00:25:20.720 --> 00:25:26.319
The family had been not been building the business, preparing

456
00:25:26.359 --> 00:25:30.319
it for the future. They weren't managing pricing, They really

457
00:25:30.359 --> 00:25:34.440
weren't managing anything. But they sold it and moved on,

458
00:25:35.599 --> 00:25:38.039
other than owning the building, of course, which maybe we'll

459
00:25:38.039 --> 00:25:41.440
get to that in a minute, but they moved on

460
00:25:41.880 --> 00:25:44.519
and that business they put it. So the factory put

461
00:25:44.559 --> 00:25:47.279
in some general manager who showed up at ten and

462
00:25:47.359 --> 00:25:50.880
left at two, and things started to slide and everybody

463
00:25:50.960 --> 00:25:54.000
stopped trusting each other, and so it got to the

464
00:25:54.000 --> 00:25:57.480
point where that twenty million dollar year business was completely

465
00:25:57.519 --> 00:26:00.920
upside down and they were losing big money every year.

466
00:26:00.960 --> 00:26:03.440
And someone in Japan had stuck their neck out with

467
00:26:03.480 --> 00:26:06.839
this decision, and they were keeping the business afloat and

468
00:26:06.880 --> 00:26:10.200
they that's when they found me. And you know, they

469
00:26:10.200 --> 00:26:12.279
approached me about the job. I said, why why would

470
00:26:12.319 --> 00:26:14.960
you want me? I know nothing about forklifts or your industry.

471
00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:18.720
I come from a completely different business model. And they said,

472
00:26:18.759 --> 00:26:22.680
it's it's not your knowledge of forklifts and so forth

473
00:26:22.720 --> 00:26:26.000
that we're interested in. You understand how to run a

474
00:26:26.079 --> 00:26:31.480
local business unit and do it profitably while collaborating with

475
00:26:31.680 --> 00:26:35.920
a large, publicly traded parent company. And we think, and

476
00:26:35.960 --> 00:26:38.880
we think that that would be you know, exactly what

477
00:26:38.920 --> 00:26:43.279
we need. And so I was hired to do that turnaround.

478
00:26:43.279 --> 00:26:45.920
It was the toughest three and a half years of

479
00:26:45.920 --> 00:26:49.160
my professional life. They told me it would take four years.

480
00:26:49.200 --> 00:26:52.599
We got it done in about three. But I saw

481
00:26:52.599 --> 00:26:55.440
a lot in that industry that I knew that I

482
00:26:55.440 --> 00:26:57.480
didn't want to be there over the long haul. I

483
00:26:57.519 --> 00:26:59.759
wanted I wanted the challenge, right. I said, if I

484
00:26:59.799 --> 00:27:02.319
can learn a new industry and a new business model

485
00:27:02.359 --> 00:27:06.400
and helped turn it around, then that's a pretty good

486
00:27:06.400 --> 00:27:09.160
feather in my cap. So that's what attracted me to it.

487
00:27:09.400 --> 00:27:12.160
I like a good challenge and I got what I

488
00:27:12.240 --> 00:27:14.519
was I got what I asked for. That there's no

489
00:27:14.559 --> 00:27:17.920
doubt about that, but I didn't. It wasn't an industry

490
00:27:17.960 --> 00:27:21.039
that I wanted to stay in. So that's how I

491
00:27:21.119 --> 00:27:24.640
ended up at Pion. So at that time, it was

492
00:27:24.759 --> 00:27:28.680
just before COVID had hit, and I was being recruited

493
00:27:28.720 --> 00:27:33.319
by two different companies, Pion being one of them. The

494
00:27:33.400 --> 00:27:39.119
other one was a small instrumentation company here in New Hampshire.

495
00:27:40.279 --> 00:27:43.079
By all accounts of that business didn't seem terribly exciting.

496
00:27:43.279 --> 00:27:45.200
It hadn't grown a lot, It was just kind of

497
00:27:45.279 --> 00:27:50.039
steady state. It was a French owned business, and you know,

498
00:27:50.119 --> 00:27:53.200
it just looked like I and the president was retiring

499
00:27:53.559 --> 00:27:55.759
president of thirty forty years. They were looking for someone

500
00:27:55.799 --> 00:27:58.440
to come and take the torch and that was the

501
00:27:58.480 --> 00:28:03.079
safe path. And I thought, you know, coming off of

502
00:28:03.440 --> 00:28:07.240
this turnaround work that I had done and learning to

503
00:28:07.279 --> 00:28:10.279
live with my hair on fire all the time, it

504
00:28:10.359 --> 00:28:14.880
seemed a little bit ho hum. And while I probably

505
00:28:14.880 --> 00:28:16.519
could have used a little ho hum, I knew that

506
00:28:16.519 --> 00:28:19.640
it wouldn't be good for a long time, and so

507
00:28:19.720 --> 00:28:21.680
I went to Pion, which looked like it had a

508
00:28:21.720 --> 00:28:27.880
ton of upside. But here's what happened. COVID hit and

509
00:28:27.960 --> 00:28:30.400
so Pinon was a small business. There was you know,

510
00:28:30.599 --> 00:28:33.640
fifteen or twenty people and they had a small division

511
00:28:33.920 --> 00:28:38.799
in the UK. The last thing I did before leaving

512
00:28:39.079 --> 00:28:42.559
New England Industrial Truck was to sign off on furloughs.

513
00:28:43.160 --> 00:28:47.519
I couldn't keep the technicians working any longer. Nobody's business

514
00:28:47.599 --> 00:28:49.799
was open. I brought them all in the house and

515
00:28:49.880 --> 00:28:52.799
because we had just relocated the business to save some money,

516
00:28:53.160 --> 00:28:54.839
I brought them all in house, kept them working for

517
00:28:54.839 --> 00:28:58.680
a couple of weeks upfitting the place, and then I

518
00:28:58.720 --> 00:29:01.640
had to There was left no more work left for them,

519
00:29:01.680 --> 00:29:03.319
so I have to sign off. So I go to

520
00:29:03.359 --> 00:29:10.400
Pion and I can see a ton of operational needs

521
00:29:10.599 --> 00:29:14.759
and but you can't. There's nobody coming into work right.

522
00:29:14.799 --> 00:29:16.480
And if you do go into work, you're wearing a mask.

523
00:29:16.519 --> 00:29:22.160
Everybody's got social distancing and sadly they're they're chief scientists

524
00:29:22.839 --> 00:29:27.079
passed away due to COVID man. So now imagine you're

525
00:29:27.119 --> 00:29:31.680
the new general manager. You're there working with the owners.

526
00:29:32.119 --> 00:29:33.920
I would say that one owner wanted me there and

527
00:29:33.960 --> 00:29:36.640
the other one that didn't. It was a husband and

528
00:29:36.680 --> 00:29:42.200
wife owner owner set. Even though it was a tough dynamic,

529
00:29:42.319 --> 00:29:46.559
but again I had it's pretty cocky and I hadn't

530
00:29:46.599 --> 00:29:49.599
had any major major I had one major setback. I

531
00:29:49.640 --> 00:29:52.400
think of my minor setback in my career up to

532
00:29:52.440 --> 00:29:55.319
that point, and so I thought, I can, I can

533
00:29:55.359 --> 00:29:57.880
do this right, I will win, I will win them

534
00:29:57.920 --> 00:30:00.519
over and and do this, and I can sees so

535
00:30:00.640 --> 00:30:06.400
much opportunity. Well, between the social distancing and losing of

536
00:30:06.440 --> 00:30:11.400
a key employee, a beloved employee, nobody really knew what

537
00:30:11.480 --> 00:30:14.200
was going on with the world, right, and so here

538
00:30:14.240 --> 00:30:16.680
I am trying to gain traction in an environment where

539
00:30:16.680 --> 00:30:19.799
everybody's feeling loss. I had never even met the gentleman

540
00:30:20.359 --> 00:30:24.720
who passed away, and so it became apparent pretty quickly

541
00:30:24.720 --> 00:30:28.279
that this was not going to be for the long haul.

542
00:30:28.640 --> 00:30:32.039
And so a lot of property, you know, capital with

543
00:30:32.119 --> 00:30:32.799
them too, right.

544
00:30:34.160 --> 00:30:38.440
Sure, yeah, there was there was that concern. It was

545
00:30:38.839 --> 00:30:42.359
the you know, it was a small business, so and

546
00:30:42.400 --> 00:30:45.599
it was capital equipment. So nobody was signing off on

547
00:30:45.680 --> 00:30:49.240
one hundred hundred and fifty thousand dollars apex. At that

548
00:30:49.279 --> 00:30:52.039
point in time. There was a services component to the

549
00:30:52.079 --> 00:30:56.759
pion business, but again those services were catering to people

550
00:30:56.799 --> 00:31:00.960
in laboratories, and the laboratories weren't open. Nothing was happening.

551
00:31:01.039 --> 00:31:03.599
So at ninety days, you know, there were a lot

552
00:31:03.640 --> 00:31:05.839
of dynamics going on that I didn't like, and I'm

553
00:31:05.880 --> 00:31:07.599
not I don't really want to get into it here,

554
00:31:07.640 --> 00:31:11.119
but suffice to say it wasn't feeling like the right fit.

555
00:31:11.240 --> 00:31:13.880
And on my ninety day review, I had a list

556
00:31:13.960 --> 00:31:17.839
of things basically that it needed to change if if

557
00:31:17.839 --> 00:31:19.559
it was going to make sense for me to stay.

558
00:31:19.839 --> 00:31:22.119
And they had already arrived at that conclusion, like, we

559
00:31:22.160 --> 00:31:25.000
don't know what's going on in the world, but we

560
00:31:25.079 --> 00:31:28.559
know that we can't afford you to stick around here

561
00:31:29.359 --> 00:31:32.400
while we can't really have any of the change that

562
00:31:32.480 --> 00:31:34.759
you came here to do in the first place. So

563
00:31:35.480 --> 00:31:37.480
we parted of ways. It was just you know, a

564
00:31:37.519 --> 00:31:43.200
COVID casualty, if you will. Yeah, I probably would have

565
00:31:43.200 --> 00:31:45.680
been fine if I had gone the boring path right

566
00:31:45.720 --> 00:31:46.359
with that other.

567
00:31:46.240 --> 00:31:48.880
Operatiy had there been no COVID, But who knew. I mean, right,

568
00:31:48.920 --> 00:31:51.559
there's no way we wouldn't write right right, we're going

569
00:31:51.640 --> 00:31:53.519
to take our we're going to take our second break.

570
00:31:53.559 --> 00:31:55.319
Right there, we'll come right back to the to the

571
00:31:55.400 --> 00:31:57.799
end of that talk about excelums and then right into

572
00:31:57.839 --> 00:31:59.279
focal point right after the break.

573
00:31:59.440 --> 00:32:00.000
We right back.

574
00:32:04.359 --> 00:32:08.279
You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Hallane on

575
00:32:08.599 --> 00:32:12.599
W four CY Radio. That's W four CWY dot com.

576
00:32:12.720 --> 00:32:15.400
Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up

577
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right here on Winning Business Radio.

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599
00:33:33.880 --> 00:33:36.920
And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene,

600
00:33:36.960 --> 00:33:40.799
presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in

601
00:33:40.880 --> 00:33:44.359
mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again

602
00:33:44.680 --> 00:33:49.519
is Kevin Helene.

603
00:33:52.880 --> 00:33:55.880
All right, we're back with Steve Debrees, certified business and

604
00:33:56.000 --> 00:33:59.599
executive coach with Focal Point and founder of Debrees Enterprises.

605
00:34:00.079 --> 00:34:00.440
Wrap up.

606
00:34:00.440 --> 00:34:02.680
Sorry for the abrupt change there or the abrupt exit there.

607
00:34:02.920 --> 00:34:06.759
I just looked at the clock. Wrap up that story

608
00:34:06.799 --> 00:34:09.480
and we'll get into uh exelums and focal points.

609
00:34:10.360 --> 00:34:13.000
Well, I think the wrap up is, you know, I

610
00:34:13.079 --> 00:34:16.039
was a bit of a COVID casualty, right there was

611
00:34:16.159 --> 00:34:19.159
there was nothing that I could do at that particular

612
00:34:19.199 --> 00:34:22.559
point in time at the start of COVID that met

613
00:34:22.559 --> 00:34:24.400
the charter of of why I was brought in in

614
00:34:24.400 --> 00:34:26.639
the first place, which was to help the the owners

615
00:34:26.639 --> 00:34:30.159
of the business back away and to take the business,

616
00:34:30.239 --> 00:34:33.960
you know, into sort of its next generation of what

617
00:34:33.960 --> 00:34:36.400
whatever it was going to be, right, it just didn't

618
00:34:36.519 --> 00:34:38.840
It didn't work out, and these things happened from time

619
00:34:38.880 --> 00:34:42.599
to time. It's it's not anybody's fault. Nobody saw COVID coming.

620
00:34:43.960 --> 00:34:47.599
So I was out of work that summer, which was

621
00:34:47.840 --> 00:34:51.599
actually okay because yeah, yeah, nobody was working. I had

622
00:34:51.639 --> 00:34:54.320
just bought my boat, and so you know, I spent

623
00:34:54.400 --> 00:34:55.960
a lot of time during the week just kind of

624
00:34:55.960 --> 00:34:56.800
hanging our steel.

625
00:34:57.159 --> 00:34:58.400
He's on an off site.

626
00:34:59.119 --> 00:35:03.440
Yeah yeah, No, Steve was checking for job opportunities and

627
00:35:03.480 --> 00:35:06.559
then high tailing it up to the lake for a

628
00:35:06.599 --> 00:35:11.639
few months. But I got an opportunity as CEO at Excellence,

629
00:35:11.679 --> 00:35:16.559
which is another very small analytical instrumentation business, really really

630
00:35:16.679 --> 00:35:22.840
unique scientific equipment, and so it felt kind of like

631
00:35:22.880 --> 00:35:25.840
going back to the minor leagues, like it compared to

632
00:35:25.880 --> 00:35:28.239
where I had been and the money that I had

633
00:35:28.280 --> 00:35:31.960
been making. It felt from a career wise, like a

634
00:35:31.960 --> 00:35:34.840
little bit of a setback in some respects, but in

635
00:35:34.880 --> 00:35:38.599
other respects, I saw tons and tons of opportunity. Right,

636
00:35:38.639 --> 00:35:41.800
they didn't have any kind of an ERP system, and

637
00:35:42.320 --> 00:35:45.119
you know, they were growing. There wasn't a whole lot

638
00:35:45.119 --> 00:35:47.800
of organization going on. It was. It was being run

639
00:35:47.840 --> 00:35:52.320
by a scientist who founded the business, and an engineer

640
00:35:52.440 --> 00:35:56.320
who was trying to be both ops and engineering. His

641
00:35:56.440 --> 00:35:58.880
name is Mark Osgood Mark and I have become good friends.

642
00:36:00.119 --> 00:36:02.039
Was a vice president of sales there by the name

643
00:36:02.079 --> 00:36:06.320
of Dave Kwaievski. And Dave actually had been at Pion

644
00:36:06.880 --> 00:36:10.079
prior to Excellence, and he's the He had heard about

645
00:36:10.119 --> 00:36:14.360
me and put my name into the Excellence owner's ears

646
00:36:14.519 --> 00:36:17.480
about coming in as a as a COO. So I

647
00:36:17.599 --> 00:36:21.320
arrived there, I see all kinds of opportunity, but the

648
00:36:21.360 --> 00:36:23.599
owner didn't really want to move as quickly as we

649
00:36:23.719 --> 00:36:28.079
needed in any capacity. And so Mark and Dave and

650
00:36:28.119 --> 00:36:31.039
I the those two week the were the best things

651
00:36:31.079 --> 00:36:34.519
that came out of that opportunity. We became friends and

652
00:36:34.519 --> 00:36:38.039
and the transition over to focal point. So it got

653
00:36:38.039 --> 00:36:40.119
to the point where we were all so frustrated about

654
00:36:40.119 --> 00:36:42.519
being there, and it was a little bit different from

655
00:36:42.519 --> 00:36:44.960
Mark because he had been there for the for the longest.

656
00:36:45.559 --> 00:36:48.559
But we were all talking about what was next, and

657
00:36:48.599 --> 00:36:53.079
we were all thinking entrepreneurially, which was interesting. And it

658
00:36:53.199 --> 00:36:55.199
was Dave that said to me, you know, I've been

659
00:36:55.239 --> 00:36:58.280
talking with franchise consultants and I kind of looked at

660
00:36:58.320 --> 00:36:59.840
him and I was like, franchise, what are you gonna

661
00:36:59.840 --> 00:37:01.360
buy dunkin Donuts? Like what are we talk?

662
00:37:02.039 --> 00:37:02.239
Yeah?

663
00:37:02.360 --> 00:37:05.400
Yeah, yeah, what do we want to you know, employee

664
00:37:05.440 --> 00:37:08.039
minimum wage people and do all that? Like that's not

665
00:37:08.519 --> 00:37:10.960
what I'm used to. And so he said, no, no, no,

666
00:37:11.079 --> 00:37:14.400
there's a bunch of like solopreneur kind of like white

667
00:37:14.400 --> 00:37:16.159
collar businesses out there. He says, you want to talk

668
00:37:16.159 --> 00:37:18.199
with this guy? So I said sure. I talked with

669
00:37:18.280 --> 00:37:21.199
him and he said, boy, you know, you'd be a

670
00:37:21.239 --> 00:37:23.800
really good fit at focal Point. I said, focal Point?

671
00:37:23.840 --> 00:37:26.480
What's that? And so he told me a little bit

672
00:37:26.480 --> 00:37:30.360
about it, and I said, okay, fine, I listened and

673
00:37:30.440 --> 00:37:32.519
I kind of stuck a pin in it. A couple

674
00:37:32.559 --> 00:37:34.280
of weeks later, Dave comes in. He says, hey, I

675
00:37:34.320 --> 00:37:37.480
talked with another franchise consultant. I really like this guy.

676
00:37:37.880 --> 00:37:40.599
You ought to have another conversation with him. I said fine.

677
00:37:41.320 --> 00:37:45.039
So that conversation went very much like the first conversation,

678
00:37:45.159 --> 00:37:47.320
and the guy basically said, I could give you a

679
00:37:47.360 --> 00:37:50.519
list of franchises that I think you'd be good for.

680
00:37:50.679 --> 00:37:53.159
He says, but I'm telling you right now, for you,

681
00:37:53.360 --> 00:37:56.119
focal Point is going to be the best fit. So

682
00:37:56.199 --> 00:37:59.280
I said, Okay, fine, connect me with somebody from Focal Point,

683
00:37:59.519 --> 00:38:02.559
and I what I heard and it. I loved it

684
00:38:02.639 --> 00:38:05.760
so much as scared me after a little bit, because

685
00:38:05.800 --> 00:38:08.039
it was all the best parts of what I've done

686
00:38:08.760 --> 00:38:11.960
as an executive throughout my career in terms of helping

687
00:38:12.039 --> 00:38:14.800
people get where they want to go, helping businesses were,

688
00:38:15.400 --> 00:38:19.559
you know, become the best version of themselves without a

689
00:38:19.599 --> 00:38:22.480
lot of the without a lot of the nonsense. And

690
00:38:22.559 --> 00:38:25.360
so I got very excited very quickly, and I talked

691
00:38:25.360 --> 00:38:28.519
with a lot of different Vocal Point coaches and Wow,

692
00:38:28.559 --> 00:38:31.119
this this could be really great. But then I started

693
00:38:31.119 --> 00:38:34.320
getting nervous, and so as I continue to have these

694
00:38:34.360 --> 00:38:37.679
discovery conversations, I approached it like today's the day I'm

695
00:38:37.679 --> 00:38:39.559
going to figure out why this is a bad idea

696
00:38:40.440 --> 00:38:44.599
and the only bad the only thing that I could

697
00:38:44.639 --> 00:38:48.199
find at the end of all of my exploration was

698
00:38:48.239 --> 00:38:50.280
whether or not I was willing to bet on myself

699
00:38:50.400 --> 00:38:51.679
to do the business development.

700
00:38:52.039 --> 00:38:52.840
I was going to say that.

701
00:38:52.920 --> 00:38:56.760
Yet one stepback that I had that I mentioned earlier

702
00:38:56.840 --> 00:38:58.880
that I didn't talk about was when I was at

703
00:38:58.920 --> 00:39:02.360
DJ Instruments and we owned by Dynisco. The business was

704
00:39:02.440 --> 00:39:05.000
running so well they said, we don't need you to

705
00:39:05.039 --> 00:39:07.320
be a general manager. We need you to be a

706
00:39:07.360 --> 00:39:11.000
business development guy. Right, you've got this little machine that's

707
00:39:11.039 --> 00:39:14.199
a cash register. You're just cranking out money. We want

708
00:39:14.239 --> 00:39:17.559
more of it, naturally, And I didn't want to be

709
00:39:17.599 --> 00:39:20.639
a business development person. I wanted to be a general manager.

710
00:39:21.159 --> 00:39:23.559
And so I spent a year kicking and screaming about that,

711
00:39:24.079 --> 00:39:29.800
pissing off the executives at Dynisco and Roper about that.

712
00:39:31.679 --> 00:39:35.320
But I learned something from that experience, and so back

713
00:39:35.320 --> 00:39:38.360
to focal point and that decision point, I said, well,

714
00:39:39.320 --> 00:39:42.800
I haven't seen anything from a traditional general manager type

715
00:39:42.840 --> 00:39:46.880
role open up. I've always wanted to have my own business,

716
00:39:47.199 --> 00:39:49.800
never knew what it would look like, and now here's

717
00:39:49.840 --> 00:39:52.599
this idea of what it could look like. And there's

718
00:39:52.639 --> 00:39:55.920
this great, seemingly great organization with the same types of

719
00:39:56.320 --> 00:40:00.679
business values and cultural values that I value. And so

720
00:40:00.840 --> 00:40:03.079
if I'm ever going to try this, it felt like

721
00:40:03.119 --> 00:40:06.800
the right time to do it. And so I, you know,

722
00:40:07.000 --> 00:40:10.320
built out the you know, the financial plan to make

723
00:40:10.360 --> 00:40:13.079
sure that we could afford for me to stop having

724
00:40:13.119 --> 00:40:16.159
an income and took the plunge into entrepreneurship.

725
00:40:16.519 --> 00:40:19.719
Excellent, Yeah, to me. I mean, I know a fair

726
00:40:19.719 --> 00:40:22.320
amount about focal Point, just because I've met a number

727
00:40:22.320 --> 00:40:25.360
of you guys through provisors, and Yeah, it takes the

728
00:40:25.360 --> 00:40:26.760
best of what you're doing and you get to do

729
00:40:26.800 --> 00:40:28.440
it over and over. Right.

730
00:40:28.800 --> 00:40:32.559
Yeah, I love it. I absolutely love it. I feel

731
00:40:32.559 --> 00:40:34.639
like I was you know, I've I've coached people for

732
00:40:34.679 --> 00:40:37.679
a long time in different ways, especially as I got

733
00:40:37.719 --> 00:40:40.039
later in my career. I found myself being able to

734
00:40:40.679 --> 00:40:43.079
use a lot of what I've been exposed to and learned,

735
00:40:43.079 --> 00:40:46.239
and especially some of the tough lessons. And I enjoyed,

736
00:40:47.199 --> 00:40:50.159
you know, coaching people, you know, younger people up. I enjoyed,

737
00:40:50.280 --> 00:40:53.039
you know, helping people who are at later stages in

738
00:40:53.079 --> 00:40:56.480
their career, you know, get to another level. Anything that

739
00:40:56.519 --> 00:41:00.440
I could do to align the businesses goals with the

740
00:41:00.480 --> 00:41:03.519
personal and professional goals of the people in that organization,

741
00:41:04.199 --> 00:41:06.320
that's what really gets my juices flowing. And when you

742
00:41:06.400 --> 00:41:08.559
can do it right, you build something really powerful.

743
00:41:09.079 --> 00:41:13.559
So you like working with technology based OEM's original quitment manufacturers,

744
00:41:13.920 --> 00:41:17.119
other manufacturing B to B service providers, and non not

745
00:41:17.199 --> 00:41:18.840
for profits. That's an interesting blend.

746
00:41:19.880 --> 00:41:24.079
So the not for profit sort of happened by accident

747
00:41:24.199 --> 00:41:26.280
and it's and it's kind of a personal story. So

748
00:41:28.119 --> 00:41:31.119
when I bought into Focal Point, which is a franchise

749
00:41:31.199 --> 00:41:33.679
you have to pay into it, I was sitting on

750
00:41:34.639 --> 00:41:38.119
some money that I inherited from my dad. And when

751
00:41:38.159 --> 00:41:40.480
I was dealing with my dad's a state, I saw

752
00:41:40.719 --> 00:41:43.280
the number of checks that he was writing to different

753
00:41:44.039 --> 00:41:48.840
nonprofit organizations, all like help animals, help people, that sort

754
00:41:48.840 --> 00:41:51.159
of thing. He was very giving in that way, and

755
00:41:51.199 --> 00:41:52.800
I said, you know what, if I'm going to start

756
00:41:52.840 --> 00:41:55.840
this business and use some of his money to do it,

757
00:41:56.599 --> 00:41:59.679
I'm going to honor what he was doing. And so

758
00:41:59.760 --> 00:42:04.320
I will always make room for a nonprofit organization that

759
00:42:05.119 --> 00:42:08.639
could benefit from leadership development, and I'll and I'll do

760
00:42:09.199 --> 00:42:12.599
a short pro bono program ninety days typically. And I

761
00:42:12.639 --> 00:42:16.559
mentioned that one day in a networking meeting and a

762
00:42:16.599 --> 00:42:19.719
woman approached me. She says, I know the perfect organization

763
00:42:19.800 --> 00:42:22.280
that could use some of your help, and she introduced me,

764
00:42:22.320 --> 00:42:25.159
and we worked for ninety days together and then they

765
00:42:25.199 --> 00:42:27.400
wanted to keep going. And they've been a client with

766
00:42:27.440 --> 00:42:29.679
me for over three years. And I've coached a lot

767
00:42:29.679 --> 00:42:33.000
of people in that organization. So I don't necessarily target it,

768
00:42:33.480 --> 00:42:34.199
but I'll never.

769
00:42:34.119 --> 00:42:40.679
Say no, I love that legacy. And so the leaders

770
00:42:40.719 --> 00:42:43.920
of these organizations say I'm taking this out of your

771
00:42:44.000 --> 00:42:47.280
off your website. They're often frustrated and overwhelmed. Right. The

772
00:42:47.360 --> 00:42:51.440
problems that you see a lot are shrinking margins, communication breakdowns,

773
00:42:51.679 --> 00:42:56.480
everybody's not on the same page, sales are stagnant, leadership

774
00:42:56.519 --> 00:43:02.000
team not aligned. Talk about out how you help them?

775
00:43:02.320 --> 00:43:04.400
I'll use just a phrase, get unstuck.

776
00:43:06.760 --> 00:43:09.440
So I, first of all, I listen, Yeah right, I

777
00:43:09.480 --> 00:43:12.639
ask a lot of questions and I listen, and oftentimes

778
00:43:12.639 --> 00:43:16.239
the problems look and sound similar, but there's obviously nuanced

779
00:43:16.239 --> 00:43:19.159
to all of it, and sometimes you're dealing with a

780
00:43:19.159 --> 00:43:22.559
lot of history there. So how do I get them unstuck?

781
00:43:23.719 --> 00:43:27.519
I use my experience first and foremost. I listen to

782
00:43:27.559 --> 00:43:30.440
what they have to say, and I understand, what is

783
00:43:30.440 --> 00:43:32.440
it that you actually want this to be like in

784
00:43:32.480 --> 00:43:35.559
a perfect world, if you could draw this out, what

785
00:43:35.599 --> 00:43:37.880
would that look like? Most of the time they have

786
00:43:37.920 --> 00:43:39.960
a pretty good answer, but sometimes they don't, and I

787
00:43:40.039 --> 00:43:43.039
have to give them the benefit of my experience to say,

788
00:43:43.039 --> 00:43:47.480
this is what it would look like, and that could

789
00:43:47.480 --> 00:43:49.960
be from any of those aspects that you mentioned. And

790
00:43:50.039 --> 00:43:52.679
so then we start, we go to work, and I

791
00:43:52.719 --> 00:43:56.320
start teaching them about themselves. I start teaching them about

792
00:43:56.800 --> 00:43:59.880
what could be with their teams. Sometimes I'll work directly

793
00:44:00.079 --> 00:44:03.159
with my client and some of the people on their team.

794
00:44:04.039 --> 00:44:06.920
But everyone is a little bit different, and so you know,

795
00:44:06.960 --> 00:44:11.239
Focal Point has great content. But I meet every client

796
00:44:11.480 --> 00:44:14.320
where they are, right, Right. If I'm working with the

797
00:44:14.360 --> 00:44:16.440
owner of a of a two million dollar business, I'm

798
00:44:16.440 --> 00:44:19.199
not trying to turn them into, you know, the owner

799
00:44:19.280 --> 00:44:22.280
of one hundred million dollar business. It's two very different

800
00:44:22.320 --> 00:44:26.199
mind frames, right, And so you have to understand where

801
00:44:26.239 --> 00:44:30.039
they are. And sometimes they know their numbers really well

802
00:44:30.719 --> 00:44:34.519
and sometimes they don't. And so how they get unstuck

803
00:44:34.719 --> 00:44:38.079
is by learning, right, I think that's that's probably the

804
00:44:38.119 --> 00:44:40.280
easiest way for me to put it. They haven't had

805
00:44:40.320 --> 00:44:43.800
the benefit of the experience that I've had, so they

806
00:44:43.880 --> 00:44:47.760
haven't learned how to be effective business leaders or good managers,

807
00:44:47.920 --> 00:44:52.039
or understand the financials anything along those lines.

808
00:44:52.079 --> 00:44:55.119
Small and can be insular, right, That's all they see

809
00:44:55.199 --> 00:44:59.599
is what they've done and seen themselves, versus the breadth

810
00:44:59.639 --> 00:45:02.079
of as you can bring from other businesses.

811
00:45:02.880 --> 00:45:05.440
Right. So you know, you get that small business owner

812
00:45:05.519 --> 00:45:09.800
operator and they don't know how to delegate. Right. They've

813
00:45:09.800 --> 00:45:11.800
had to do everything themselves for so long, and they're

814
00:45:11.840 --> 00:45:14.679
afraid to let go of the rope on anything, and

815
00:45:14.719 --> 00:45:17.559
that stunts the business's growth. It stunts the growth of

816
00:45:17.599 --> 00:45:20.960
the people and the organization, and so that becomes that

817
00:45:21.039 --> 00:45:23.920
manifests itself in turnover. Right, people get tired of being

818
00:45:23.920 --> 00:45:26.800
there because there's no opportunity, they move on, right, And

819
00:45:27.239 --> 00:45:30.079
so that's one way I help them get unstuck. I

820
00:45:30.159 --> 00:45:33.199
might teach a small business owner how to actually delegate

821
00:45:33.199 --> 00:45:37.159
and how to manage effectively. Right, if it's a bigger business,

822
00:45:37.719 --> 00:45:40.039
maybe you've got a leader in there that's just kind

823
00:45:40.079 --> 00:45:44.400
of gotten you know, I'm thinking ten fifteen to twenty million. Right,

824
00:45:44.400 --> 00:45:46.719
they've been owner operator for so long. They've done a

825
00:45:46.719 --> 00:45:50.079
good job building it, but they don't understand how to

826
00:45:50.119 --> 00:45:52.880
think like a CEO. They're still thinking like owner operator

827
00:45:52.920 --> 00:45:53.320
and they're.

828
00:45:53.159 --> 00:45:55.719
Too They made and we've probably made a bunch of money, right,

829
00:45:56.360 --> 00:45:59.480
so there's not a ton of pain probably, right.

830
00:46:00.119 --> 00:46:03.199
Yeah, until until the pain shows up because they've hit

831
00:46:03.239 --> 00:46:05.679
their ceiling. And now, you know, you don't just hit

832
00:46:05.679 --> 00:46:08.159
the ceiling and stop. Usually hit the ceiling and bounce back.

833
00:46:08.800 --> 00:46:12.039
Yeah, they realize, Oh, I've never planned for an exit, right,

834
00:46:12.239 --> 00:46:13.320
Or I don't you know, I don't know what the

835
00:46:13.360 --> 00:46:16.559
next chapter is going to look like. Or yeah, sadly

836
00:46:16.599 --> 00:46:18.480
to your point, they or somebody else gets sick.

837
00:46:19.679 --> 00:46:21.480
Yeah, it's it could be any of it, right, How

838
00:46:21.480 --> 00:46:25.159
to transition to the next generation, how to get the

839
00:46:25.199 --> 00:46:27.400
most out of your business when you when you sell it,

840
00:46:28.000 --> 00:46:31.199
Or I've still got fifteen or twenty years left and

841
00:46:31.760 --> 00:46:33.440
I've grown this thing as far as I can, and

842
00:46:33.480 --> 00:46:35.639
I don't know what to do with that anymore. I'm

843
00:46:35.679 --> 00:46:37.360
spread too thin. I don't know how to build a

844
00:46:37.440 --> 00:46:40.199
leadership team. I don't even know where to begin. And

845
00:46:40.280 --> 00:46:42.920
so you have to, you know, in any of those cases,

846
00:46:42.920 --> 00:46:45.599
you have to understand where they're at and help them

847
00:46:46.159 --> 00:46:49.159
get to whatever that next level looks like. And sometimes

848
00:46:49.159 --> 00:46:51.199
they don't know what it looks like, and so that's

849
00:46:51.239 --> 00:46:51.880
where you start.

850
00:46:53.039 --> 00:46:55.320
So you help them build organization. Perhaps it might be

851
00:46:55.360 --> 00:47:01.639
that senior team. You know a client now going through it, Yeah, what.

852
00:47:01.519 --> 00:47:06.039
Type of You know, it's a manufacturing company, and so

853
00:47:06.519 --> 00:47:10.199
you know this this owner, he's second generation, bought the

854
00:47:10.199 --> 00:47:13.000
business from his dad, has done a good job building

855
00:47:13.000 --> 00:47:15.920
it up, moved the business into a brand new facility

856
00:47:15.920 --> 00:47:19.440
that he had built out and it got stuck. And

857
00:47:20.039 --> 00:47:22.840
now it's starting to slide backwards a little bit. And

858
00:47:22.920 --> 00:47:26.000
he's got a lot of longtime loyal employees. But the

859
00:47:26.039 --> 00:47:29.000
problem is is that they he wants to get that business,

860
00:47:29.440 --> 00:47:31.639
you know, more than two x where it is today,

861
00:47:32.360 --> 00:47:34.079
and the people who have gotten him to where it

862
00:47:34.119 --> 00:47:36.920
is today, you know, he's loyal to them. So what

863
00:47:36.960 --> 00:47:40.920
do you do right? And he doesn't understand that You've

864
00:47:40.920 --> 00:47:45.440
got to bring in fresh minds, more horsepower, people who

865
00:47:45.559 --> 00:47:49.039
understand what it means to go from a ten million

866
00:47:49.079 --> 00:47:52.000
dollar business to a twenty five million dollar business. And

867
00:47:52.039 --> 00:47:56.519
most of the people in there right now it's maximum,

868
00:47:56.559 --> 00:48:00.320
like even a ten million dollar business is beyond where

869
00:48:00.320 --> 00:48:02.880
they're comfortable and operating. And so you have to bring

870
00:48:02.920 --> 00:48:07.079
in some new levels of expertise the owner financial professional.

871
00:48:08.079 --> 00:48:10.639
There's a well so for actually they do have a

872
00:48:11.119 --> 00:48:16.679
fractional CFO. I love the fractional fractional fractional CFOs, fractional

873
00:48:16.840 --> 00:48:22.159
you know VPS of HR sales marketing right for a bit.

874
00:48:22.239 --> 00:48:25.480
This is the perfect size business to the to to

875
00:48:25.599 --> 00:48:30.519
leverage fractional expertise. And so that's kind of the direction

876
00:48:30.559 --> 00:48:31.519
I'm starting to take them.

877
00:48:31.800 --> 00:48:34.519
How do your clients find you?

878
00:48:34.599 --> 00:48:37.840
Oh, usually it's word of mouth. Right, just about everybody

879
00:48:37.880 --> 00:48:39.960
has been word of mouth in some way, shape or form.

880
00:48:40.000 --> 00:48:41.639
Somebody that I know, somebody that I've just.

881
00:48:41.719 --> 00:48:44.119
Met, has been good for you up until now.

882
00:48:45.119 --> 00:48:49.119
Yeah, absolutely, Provisors has given me a couple of opportunities.

883
00:48:49.559 --> 00:48:53.239
Provisers has been great because I've learned a ton from others,

884
00:48:53.480 --> 00:48:57.119
and I've met people who you know, are willing to help,

885
00:48:57.440 --> 00:49:01.840
not just professionally, but personally. You know, I don't know

886
00:49:01.880 --> 00:49:03.519
if we have enough time, but I could share.

887
00:49:03.639 --> 00:49:05.679
We actually have to wrap up. I know then I'm

888
00:49:05.679 --> 00:49:08.400
gonna let you wrap it up, all right, So let

889
00:49:08.440 --> 00:49:11.400
me ask this best way to contact you? Your website

890
00:49:11.480 --> 00:49:14.639
is there. It'll come back in a second. Why should

891
00:49:14.679 --> 00:49:17.599
someone who's listening or watching reach out.

892
00:49:19.159 --> 00:49:24.079
Because they're frustrated with their current situation. They know that

893
00:49:24.159 --> 00:49:26.199
there's a better way, but they don't know how to

894
00:49:26.239 --> 00:49:29.199
find that better way. Right, If you're running a business

895
00:49:29.440 --> 00:49:31.719
and you know that it should be easier, a little

896
00:49:31.760 --> 00:49:33.920
bit easier, it should be a little bit better, and

897
00:49:33.960 --> 00:49:35.880
you're just not quite sure how to make that happen.

898
00:49:36.039 --> 00:49:37.920
That's why you call me excellent.

899
00:49:38.280 --> 00:49:42.400
So the website is Stevedavrees dot focalpoint dot com. There

900
00:49:42.400 --> 00:49:45.400
it is again, Steve S D e ve E Devrees

901
00:49:45.480 --> 00:49:48.320
d V D E v r I E s dot

902
00:49:48.440 --> 00:49:54.000
focal Point Coaching dot com. S Devrees at Focalpointcoaching dot com.

903
00:49:54.239 --> 00:49:55.599
Reach out and talk to Steve if you think you

904
00:49:55.679 --> 00:49:58.119
might need some help. And thank you so much. Appreciate

905
00:49:58.119 --> 00:50:00.400
the time, and it's been good to have you Kevin.

906
00:50:00.440 --> 00:50:02.960
It's been an absolute pleasure. I appreciate you and what

907
00:50:03.000 --> 00:50:03.280
you do.

908
00:50:03.599 --> 00:50:06.920
Thank you very much, and thanks everybody for listening and watching.

909
00:50:07.320 --> 00:50:10.159
We appreciate you. This is the show about business and

910
00:50:10.559 --> 00:50:13.639
often business challenges. If you've got concerns about the sales

911
00:50:13.639 --> 00:50:16.079
effectiveness of your company, whether your sales team is you

912
00:50:16.320 --> 00:50:19.000
or very small, or it's very large, feel free to

913
00:50:19.039 --> 00:50:21.400
reach out to me on Facebook or LinkedIn at Winning

914
00:50:21.519 --> 00:50:23.599
Business Radio. Drop me a note at one of my

915
00:50:23.639 --> 00:50:27.440
many email addresses, Kevin at Winning Business Radio dot com.

916
00:50:27.880 --> 00:50:30.960
Our company is Winning and Corporated. We're part of Sandler Training.

917
00:50:31.320 --> 00:50:35.000
We develop salespeople and sales teams into high achievers and

918
00:50:35.079 --> 00:50:38.440
sales leaders into true coaches and mentors. Listen, We're not

919
00:50:38.480 --> 00:50:41.280
for everybody, but maybe we should have a conversation. Thank

920
00:50:41.320 --> 00:50:44.280
you to producer and engineer one. Thank you one for

921
00:50:44.280 --> 00:50:47.079
another job well done. Be sure to join us next Monday,

922
00:50:47.119 --> 00:50:50.239
March twenty third. My returning guest will be best selling

923
00:50:50.280 --> 00:50:55.000
author and salary coach founder John Gates to introduce the Crossroads,

924
00:50:55.079 --> 00:50:58.199
a proven faith aligned path to help Christian corporate leaders

925
00:50:58.679 --> 00:51:03.800
launch their first consulting business. Until then, this is Kevin Hallena.

926
00:51:04.000 --> 00:51:06.800
You have been listening to Winning Business Radio with your host,

927
00:51:06.880 --> 00:51:09.960
Kevin Helena. If you missed any part of this episode,

928
00:51:10.079 --> 00:51:14.239
The podcast is available on Talk for Podcasting and iHeartRadio.

929
00:51:14.679 --> 00:51:18.400
For more information and questions, go to Winning Business Radio

930
00:51:18.519 --> 00:51:21.559
dot com or check us out on social media. Tune

931
00:51:21.559 --> 00:51:23.639
in again next week and every Monday at four pm

932
00:51:23.679 --> 00:51:27.199
Eastern Time to listen live to Winning Business Radio on

933
00:51:27.480 --> 00:51:31.719
W four CY Radio W four cy dot com. Until then,

934
00:51:32.079 --> 00:51:35.679
let's succeed where others have failed and win in business

935
00:51:35.960 --> 00:51:39.800
with Kevin Halenan and Winning Business Radio