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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He specializes in equipping leaders with the tools and strategies to navigate complex challenges: developing people, improving financial management, & often preparing for organizational succession.
Winning Business Radio is broadcast live Mondays at 4PM ET and Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). Winning Business Radio is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are
solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not
those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We
make no recommendations or endorsements radio show programs, services, or
products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability
explicit or implies shall be extended to W four CY
Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments
should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for
(00:20):
choosing W four CY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Churchill said, those who failed to learn from history are
condemned to repeat it. Kevin helen n believes that certainly
applies to business. Welcome to Winning Business Radio here at
W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com
and now your host, Kevin.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Helena, Thanks for joining in again today, everybody. I'm Kevin
Hallanan and welcome back to Winning Business TV and Radio
on W four cy DO. And of course we're streaming
live on talk for the number four TV dot com
and we're live on Facebook and that's at Winning Business Radio.
(01:08):
And of course we're available in podcasts after the live
show on wherever you see, your see or hear your content.
That's YouTube, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple Again. The list goes on
anywhere you listen to your podcast or radio content. The
mission of winning business radio and TV, as regular viewers
(01:29):
and listeners know, is to offer insights and advice to
help people avoid the mistakes of others, to learn best practices.
Those are the how tos, the what toos, the what
not tos. Also and to be challenged and hopefully to
be inspired by the successes of others. Those others are
consultants and coaches, advisors, authors, founders and owners and entrepreneurs,
(01:50):
people with expertise. But you know, virtually every successful person
I've ever had a chance to talk to has had
some form of failure in their lives and careers. So,
as I said, say, every week, while we all have
to get our knees skinned once in a while, I'm
driven to keep those scrapes from needing major surgery. Let's
endeavor to learn from history so we don't repeat it.
I've spent the better part of my career equipping businesses
(02:11):
to grow from solopreneurs to small and medium sized companies
all the way up to the fortune fifty. I've seen
some of those companies win and to varying degrees. I've
seen some fail I've had the opportunity to rub elbows
with some of the highest performing people around and with
some who probably should have found other professions. And in
my own businesses, I've had lots of success, but some
failures too. I like to think I've learned a lot
(02:33):
from those experiences. So yeah, you're going to hear from me,
but mostly you'll hear from our guests. Those experts, consultants, coaches, advisors, authors,
founders and owners and entrepreneurs. And today my guest is
Steve Devrees, certified Business and executive coach with Focal Point
and founder of Devirees Enterprises. Here's Steve's bio. Steve Devrees
has dedicated his career to transforming organizations into high performing,
(02:56):
future ready businesses. As a certified business and executive coach
with over twenty five years of experience, he's worked with
countless technology based OEMs, manufacturing companies, and service providers to
improve team performance and strategic execution. Steve specializes in equipping
leaders with the tools and strategies to navigate complex challenges,
(03:16):
whether it's developing leaders, improving financial management, or preparing for
organizational succession. His hands on approach helps clients see tangible results,
often within months. His clients have achieved fifty excuse me,
twenty to fifty percent profitability increases in just twelve months,
twenty five percent in sales growth after implementing tailored strategies,
(03:38):
in fifty percent reductions, and leadership turnover. Steve loves mentoring
and up and coming leaders to maximize their impact. He's
an avid outdoors enthusiast, particularly in the New Hampshire lakes
and mountains. He enjoys volunteering his time as a coach
in youth sports and advising entrepreneurial students. Steve's favorite quote
is success is not final, failure is not fatal. It's
(04:01):
the courage to continue that counts Winston Churchill, man of
My Own Heart. He earned his BS in Business Administration
and Management at UMS Lowell, as well as his MBA
in management. Steve coaches because he enjoys helping people succeed.
He finds the most meeting in supporting leaders through tough moments,
when decisions feel heavy, pressures high, and clarity is hard
(04:22):
to find. Coaching allows Steve to bring a calming, experienced
presence to those situations, helping leaders think clearly enact with confidence.
Clients value his perspective, steadiness and accountability. Many say they
begin anticipating the questions he will ask and the standards
he will hold them to, evidence that the work has
become part of how they lead. Steve resides in Windham,
(04:43):
New Hampshire, with his wife Kim, and their two children,
Page and Sam. Steve. Welcome to Winning Business Radio.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
Thank you so much for having Kevin. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
You got it. I know you're busy and I appreciate it.
So tell us about your family. Start with you wife, Kim.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
Yeah. So, Kim and I met when we were both
attending Umassilole one hundred years ago. Some people know this.
Our first date was on Valentine's Day. Cool, and I
knew from that moment, like that first date, I was done.
We were engaged less than a year later and married
(05:18):
about a year and a half after that. And it's
been well, I will say, mostly smooth sailing of marriages ever,
but smooth sailing all the way since. So this year
will be year number anniversary twenty seven.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Oh, congratulations. And does she work?
Speaker 4 (05:36):
She does. She's director of project management, and I guess
the right hand person for the COO of a Boulder,
Colorado based pet food company.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Very cool, very cool. Yeah, and your kids page is
twenty three SAMs eighteen.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
Tell us about them so pages. She is off doing
the adulting thing, as she likes to say. So. She
lives in Boston, graduated from the University of New England
a little over a year ago, and you know, yeah,
it's gorgeous up there, and she she is making her
way as a young adult. And my son Sam, who
(06:13):
is a freshman at Plymouth State University, he's he's on
spring break this week, living the life of luxury. Uh,
one floor below me right now. I can hear him
talking to his friends as we speak.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
That's funny, that's funny. Uh. They like the outdoors too, absolutely.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
Yeah. We have a we have a boat that we
we take out up on one of asaki and and
you know, it's just it's lots of day trips. But
you know, we'll parley that into a one week stay
at a at an airbnb somewhere up there, and the
whole family comes up and they bring their friends and
and we have a good time, and you know, we'll
we'll always do the outdoor things, the the hiking and
(06:55):
voting and whatever comes our way.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Yeah, my family and another family cross the street from us.
We lived in Midfield, and the two families got together
and bought a big old farmhouse on twenty Route twenty
five between Plymouth and Romney and Wentworth. And so I
spent a ton of time as a kid. I loved
New Hampshire up there, you know.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
So yeah, I mean my childhood was all like the
summer vacations were all one of asaki or or there
was a period of time at Newfound Lake as well.
So I just I love the New Hampshire Lakes region.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
It's love them both. Newfound we had we had a
piece of land on Newfound that my parents didn't end
up developing, the end up selling it, but we were
going to be there. We did swim there a lot.
So all right, So you and Bill ricka Mass tell
us about the town and what it was like to
grow up there.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
Oh geez, what can I say about Bill Rica So
Merrimack Valley town, you know, I mean for me, it
was kind of a normal upbringing. I had my crew
of friends, you know. We uh, we hung out all
over town playing at a lot of basketball together, a
lot of pick up sports, right, I mean football, baseball,
all that good stuff, driving around, getting into a little
(08:04):
bit of trouble here and there, right, that was all
part of it. I mean bill Rica itself is I
think it. For a long time it was very very
much a blue collar kind of town, and I think
it's morphed into more of a mix of blue collar,
white collar types of professions, tons of industry there. Funny enough. So,
(08:26):
I mean I had my first, you know, first real
job there in bill Rica. And you know, when I
graduated UMass Lowell, I ended up working at a business
in bill Rica for nineteen years. That was not five
minutes from my parents' house where I grew up. And
I couldn't get out of bill Rica for a period
of time. I couldn't get out of Billrica even if
(08:48):
I tried. It was it was kind of crazy.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Just when you thought you got out, Yeah, they pulled
me back in, all right? And how did you make
it to wind Windams, a nice town in New Hampshire.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
Yeah. So, as I mentioned earlier, my wife and I
met at UMass loll And so when we when we graduated,
we ended up buying our first house in Loll just
before just before we got married, and then sold that
house and bought another house in Loll. We were trying
(09:19):
to move back to the original neighborhood where we started.
We made a mistake in terms of the location. You
know that when when you hear people talk about location, location, location,
they are one hundred and twenty percent right, because I
lived in a in a new house on a street
in a neighborhood that we didn't absolutely love and we
couldn't wait to get out of there, and when the
(09:41):
housing market crashed, we ended up we were underwater on
that house. We ended up paying to get out of it.
And we were trying to move back to the neighborhood
where we had started because that's where we really wanted
to be and couldn't find the type of house that
we wanted. We had some other family dynamics going on
(10:02):
that were basically pointing to us to leave Loll, and
we had looked on and off over the years in
southern New Hampshire because we both really liked New Hampshire
and so the time, you know, at that point you
could buy low into into Windom, Yes, you can't really
do that now, but at that time we were able
to buy Low and Windom and it's been great for us.
(10:23):
I mean, great school system, great neighborhoods. Uh, you know,
met a lot of really really good friends here, so
it's it's been good to us.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Nice all right. So now consider high school years, maybe
early college. Who were your early influencers.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Oh, I'm going to tell you about people that no
one's ever heard of before unless you were you. You
were in the types of businesses the the early I
was very lucky. I tell people this a lot. My
early influencers were actually the bosses that I worked for
as a as a teenage kid. I was very fortunate
(11:00):
to work for some really smart people, good people, people
who had the patience to show me the ropes. I
fell in love with business at a young age, and
I knew I wanted to be in business leadership, probably
when I was fifteen years old. Very first job, first
w two job. Anyway, I worked at a liquor store
(11:23):
and I worked in the back where I sorted all
of the bottles and cans that people would return, you know,
for the nickel. And I mean it was just a
perfect job for a you know, a young high school kid,
but it was it was nasty, and I was, you know,
cleaning toilets for the employees and taking the trash out
and doing all these things. But the guy who owned
(11:46):
the store, his name's Vinnie Straziri. I think he's since
sold the store and retired. But I was in and
out of the little corner store next to the liquor
store all the time as a kid, and he approached
me one day and said, you need a job, and
as I heard you looking, and I said, yeah, I
have been looking for a job. So he hired me,
and he taught me so much about business because I
would finish up my work and I would go and
(12:07):
see him. I'd see all these papers out all over
his desk, and I was always very curious about it,
and i'd be asking, you know, the general ledger books
and purchase orders and packing slips and all these different things,
and I would be asking him questions, probably to the
point where I annoyed him, but I just kind of
loved how it all went together, and so that got
(12:28):
me curious about business. And then I moved on from there.
And I won't take you through my entire pre college resume,
but suffice to say, each stop of the way, I
met managers who really wanted to take me under their
wing and teach me different things. And it built my
love of business management and leadership. You know, for many years,
(12:52):
right through college, I had all kinds of part time
jobs through college. I just got lucky, you know, I
got lucky in that I was exposed to so many
good people. We hear about bad bosses all the time,
and I see it with my clients sometimes. I see
the bad bosses within their organizations and I see the
impact that it has on the people that report to them.
(13:12):
And honestly, that's who I coach for. I coach for
those people who wake up every day and slog off
to work because you know, they need the paycheck, but
they're miserable, and it's because they're working for a poorly
run team or a poorly run company. And I want
them to have a good experience as much as I
want the owners of the business to do well. So
(13:33):
and that all came from learning from these people who
had been in business, and I was lucky enough to
be exposed to love that.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
All right, we're going to take our first commercial break
right here. We will be back in one minute, everybody,
We're going to be back in about sixty seconds with
Steve Debrees.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helenet on
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go away. More helpful information is coming right up right
here on Winning Business Radio.
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Speaker 2 (15:24):
And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helena,
presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in
mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again
is Kevin Helena.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
All right, we are back with Steve Davirees, certified business
and executive coach with Focal Point and founder of Debrees Enterprises. Enterprises. Sorry,
how did you make it to DJ Instruments? And I
know looked like there are a couple iterations. It was
purchased maybe twice.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
Yeah, So so DJ Instruments was a design and manufacturing
company for custom sensors. How I found them? It's actually
kind of a fun story. So you know, when you're
in college, you get these job faares, right, So at
UMass loll it was no different. They had the job fares.
Lots of big companies looking for, you know, young graduates
(16:22):
that they can kind of chew up and spit out
and maybe wanted to stick. And I didn't want to
do that. I was working for Putnam Investments at the
time that I graduated and they were offering me work
and I just I didn't want to be there. I
could see I was just going to be a number.
I was looking for something smaller, where I felt like
I could learn a lot and make a difference and
(16:43):
not just kind of crank along as a you know,
as a as a cog in the wheel. So I
went to the career services office at UMass loll and
I said, listen, all these all these job fare, big
companies that they're not doing it for me. What else
is there? There must be something? And they said, oh, yeah,
there is. And you know, this was before the Internet
was really you know, a big thing, so dating myself certainly.
(17:07):
But the woman came along and handed me this thick
binder boom, drops it on the table and says, these
are all local companies looking to hire. Flip through this
and see if anything catches your attention. So I sat
in that career services office for I don't know how long,
flipping one page after another, reading job descriptions. About halfway
(17:30):
through I read this one from DJ Instruments and it
was for a purchasing manager role. And I read through
it and it just it spoke to me. And I said,
that's it, that's the one. So I responded, I interviewed,
and I got the job and I was there for
nineteen years.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Wow, with progressing a responsibility. You look like you left
as VP COO.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
Yeah. So started out in purchasing and I had one
person reporting to me. I had to put all kinds
of things into place. They had purchased an MRP system
about a year before I got there, and they tinkered
with it but never did anything. So I had to
learn what an MRP system was and how to build
it up, because he handed that to me as a project,
(18:14):
as well as getting all of their inventory under control.
Inventory was all over the place. There was no control.
They had little index cards where they supposedly kept counts
and stuff coming in and stuff going out. It wasn't
controlled terribly well at all. Did well with that. I
probably made a few enemies along the way for the
(18:34):
people who liked having free access to the materials. But
we got it ountder control. We started reducing our overall
footprint in terms of the amount that we had in
inventory and built up the MRP system. And then the
owner who was my boss, asked me to take on
(18:55):
more of an operations leadership role. So now I had
all those people who I had ticked off that you know,
I took all their inventory away and made them ask
nicely for it. They now reported to me and did
that for a couple of years. And then one day
the owner called me, and his name's Mike Testa, another
example of a phenomenal boss that I learned a ton from.
(19:18):
He called me into his office and he said, you
see me parading all these people in suits in and
out of here the last couple of weeks. Said yeah,
what is that all about? He says, well, I've been
I've been interviewing for a general manager or you know,
a chief operating officer. And he said, because I can't
be in the business. His wife had become very sick
and he needed to be with them. Yeah, and he says,
here's the deal. He says, they're all very capable, he says,
(19:41):
but I don't trust them. I trust you. And he
had been grooming me, you know, to to elevate elevate
me in the in the business, and it's what I wanted.
But he literally took the key to the building out
of his pocket and slid it across the desk. And said,
I'm going to promote you. You're in shock arch, it's
your show to run. Lean on the staff because we
(20:04):
had a very seasoned staff there. He said, lean on
the staff, don't screw it up. I'll check in from
time to time. And he got up and he left. Well,
and I sat there with this, Yeah, I mean, it
was it was. It was great that he trusted me,
and it was exactly what I wanted, but it was
exactly the wrong way to that. I that I wanted
to get it right. It felt like I had probably
(20:25):
earned the shot, but not at the expense of, you know,
his family situation. And so I went home that night
and I didn't know how to feel. And I remember
the conversation with with Kim and she said, well, listen,
regardless of how you got here, you're here, and so
what are you going to do with it? And so
I thought a lot that I don't think I slept
(20:46):
a wink that night, and I had to go into
work the next day and address, you know, everybody and
kind of let them know what was going on. And
he was a very very beloved leader in the business.
So you can imagine that I've got these huge shoes
to fill everybody feeling, you know, the pain of what
he and his family are going through. And so that
(21:07):
was that was the first lesson that I had in
becoming a leader and trying to find your own path
and your own And what I learned is you can't
replace those people. You have to find your own path
and do things. You know, you can learn from them,
but you kind of have to do things a little
(21:27):
bit differently. You're just in your own style. And so
that's when I started learning that lesson, and I was
there for a long time. It was sold. He came
back to the business a couple of years later and
he just he wasn't going to stay in the business,
so he decided to sell it, and that's when it
was acquired by a much larger sensor company, dy Nisco.
At the same time, Dynisco was acquired by a Roper,
(21:50):
which is a very large, publicly traded company. So imagine,
you know, I had found my footing as the leader
of this little it felt like a family business, twenty
five people, and now all of a sudden, I have
to deal with six or seven new bosses at Dynisco,
and they have new bosses at Roper and I'm getting
(22:10):
to learn all of them while trying to you know,
steer the ship at Little DJ Instruments. So that was
a really exciting, scary time in my life.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
But it talks you about corporate.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
Oh boy did it. What was interesting is is that
the the guys who were all the vps and the
president of Dynisco, they all had equity in that business.
So most of them, at different points in times, scattered
right they left the business. There was only one gentleman
that stuck around. He was the engineering leader. And it
(22:47):
was all new leaders. From sales, to marketing, to ops
to to finance. They all came in, so I had
to learn all of them. And then they brought me
into Roper right, and Roper was always doing these you know,
Roper is a portfolio company, so they had, you know,
twenty million dollar businesses, fifty two hundred million dollar businesses,
(23:10):
and here's Little DJ Instruments. At the time, I think
we're probably four or five million in revenue. And I
had but I had to learn how to operate DJ
Instruments as a business unit just like those larger ones,
and present it just like those larger ones. So I
learned how to speak corporate in that environment. But more importantly,
I learned how to take what corporate expected and boil
(23:33):
it down into something that worked for a small business.
And that's what I you know, a lot of what
I do with my clients today.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
All right. So then you went over equipment Depot as
general manager. You had another position at Pion as a GM.
Talk about those two companies and roles as GM.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
So the Equipment Depot was was actually it was. It
was under a different name at that point in time.
So it was a New England Industrial truck an e
T and any it was a brand forklifts yeah, sorry,
(24:12):
a forklift dealership and so any it had built quite
a reputation in New England as one of the premier
forklift dealers and it was built up by a family.
Family ended up selling it to the manufacturer of the
primary forklift line at the time. It was Nissan. It
became Unit Carriers. I won't bore you with all the
(24:34):
different names, but ultimately the reason that happened is because
the forklift manufacturer was acquired by Mitsubishi. So someone at
Mitsupichee Japan said we want to start to own the
sales channel. The way that whole industry works is you know,
either you own all of your factory stores like a
(24:55):
Crown forklift, right, so it's factory and they own all
this stores, or you sold through independent dealers. Mitsubishi said,
we want to own some dealers and they instructed the
Chicago area based factory go buy a couple of dealerships. Well,
they bought one in Wisconsin out in the Madison not Madison,
doesn't matter in Wisconsin, and one here in New England.
(25:20):
The family had been not been building the business, preparing
it for the future. They weren't managing pricing, They really
weren't managing anything. But they sold it and moved on,
other than owning the building, of course, which maybe we'll
get to that in a minute, but they moved on
(25:41):
and that business they put it. So the factory put
in some general manager who showed up at ten and
left at two, and things started to slide and everybody
stopped trusting each other, and so it got to the
point where that twenty million dollar year business was completely
upside down and they were losing big money every year.
And someone in Japan had stuck their neck out with
(26:03):
this decision, and they were keeping the business afloat and
they that's when they found me. And you know, they
approached me about the job. I said, why why would
you want me? I know nothing about forklifts or your industry.
I come from a completely different business model. And they said,
it's it's not your knowledge of forklifts and so forth
that we're interested in. You understand how to run a
(26:26):
local business unit and do it profitably while collaborating with
a large, publicly traded parent company. And we think, and
we think that that would be you know, exactly what
we need. And so I was hired to do that turnaround.
It was the toughest three and a half years of
my professional life. They told me it would take four years.
(26:49):
We got it done in about three. But I saw
a lot in that industry that I knew that I
didn't want to be there over the long haul. I
wanted I wanted the challenge, right. I said, if I
can learn a new industry and a new business model
and helped turn it around, then that's a pretty good
feather in my cap. So that's what attracted me to it.
(27:09):
I like a good challenge and I got what I
was I got what I asked for. That there's no
doubt about that, but I didn't. It wasn't an industry
that I wanted to stay in. So that's how I
ended up at Pion. So at that time, it was
just before COVID had hit, and I was being recruited
by two different companies, Pion being one of them. The
(27:33):
other one was a small instrumentation company here in New Hampshire.
By all accounts of that business didn't seem terribly exciting.
It hadn't grown a lot, It was just kind of
steady state. It was a French owned business, and you know,
it just looked like I and the president was retiring
(27:53):
president of thirty forty years. They were looking for someone
to come and take the torch and that was the
safe path. And I thought, you know, coming off of
this turnaround work that I had done and learning to
live with my hair on fire all the time, it
seemed a little bit ho hum. And while I probably
(28:14):
could have used a little ho hum, I knew that
it wouldn't be good for a long time, and so
I went to Pion, which looked like it had a
ton of upside. But here's what happened. COVID hit and
so Pinon was a small business. There was you know,
fifteen or twenty people and they had a small division
in the UK. The last thing I did before leaving
(28:39):
New England Industrial Truck was to sign off on furloughs.
I couldn't keep the technicians working any longer. Nobody's business
was open. I brought them all in the house and
because we had just relocated the business to save some money,
I brought them all in house, kept them working for
a couple of weeks upfitting the place, and then I
had to There was left no more work left for them,
(29:01):
so I have to sign off. So I go to
Pion and I can see a ton of operational needs
and but you can't. There's nobody coming into work right.
And if you do go into work, you're wearing a mask.
Everybody's got social distancing and sadly they're they're chief scientists
(29:22):
passed away due to COVID man. So now imagine you're
the new general manager. You're there working with the owners.
I would say that one owner wanted me there and
the other one that didn't. It was a husband and
wife owner owner set. Even though it was a tough dynamic,
but again I had it's pretty cocky and I hadn't
(29:46):
had any major major I had one major setback. I
think of my minor setback in my career up to
that point, and so I thought, I can, I can
do this right, I will win, I will win them
over and and do this, and I can sees so
much opportunity. Well, between the social distancing and losing of
a key employee, a beloved employee, nobody really knew what
(30:11):
was going on with the world, right, and so here
I am trying to gain traction in an environment where
everybody's feeling loss. I had never even met the gentleman
who passed away, and so it became apparent pretty quickly
that this was not going to be for the long haul.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
And so a lot of property, you know, capital with
them too, right.
Speaker 4 (30:34):
Sure, yeah, there was there was that concern. It was
the you know, it was a small business, so and
it was capital equipment. So nobody was signing off on
one hundred hundred and fifty thousand dollars apex. At that
point in time. There was a services component to the
pion business, but again those services were catering to people
(30:56):
in laboratories, and the laboratories weren't open. Nothing was happening.
So at ninety days, you know, there were a lot
of dynamics going on that I didn't like, and I'm
not I don't really want to get into it here,
but suffice to say it wasn't feeling like the right fit.
And on my ninety day review, I had a list
of things basically that it needed to change if if
(31:17):
it was going to make sense for me to stay.
And they had already arrived at that conclusion, like, we
don't know what's going on in the world, but we
know that we can't afford you to stick around here
while we can't really have any of the change that
you came here to do in the first place. So
we parted of ways. It was just you know, a
COVID casualty, if you will. Yeah, I probably would have
(31:43):
been fine if I had gone the boring path right
with that other.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
Operatiy had there been no COVID, But who knew. I mean, right,
there's no way we wouldn't write right right, we're going
to take our we're going to take our second break.
Right there, we'll come right back to the to the
end of that talk about excelums and then right into
focal point right after the break.
Speaker 4 (31:59):
We right back.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Hallane on
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Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up
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Speaker 2 (33:33):
And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene,
presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in
mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again
is Kevin Helene.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
All right, we're back with Steve Debrees, certified business and
executive coach with Focal Point and founder of Debrees Enterprises.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
Wrap up.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Sorry for the abrupt change there or the abrupt exit there.
I just looked at the clock. Wrap up that story
and we'll get into uh exelums and focal points.
Speaker 4 (34:10):
Well, I think the wrap up is, you know, I
was a bit of a COVID casualty, right there was
there was nothing that I could do at that particular
point in time at the start of COVID that met
the charter of of why I was brought in in
the first place, which was to help the the owners
of the business back away and to take the business,
you know, into sort of its next generation of what
(34:33):
whatever it was going to be, right, it just didn't
It didn't work out, and these things happened from time
to time. It's it's not anybody's fault. Nobody saw COVID coming.
So I was out of work that summer, which was
actually okay because yeah, yeah, nobody was working. I had
just bought my boat, and so you know, I spent
(34:54):
a lot of time during the week just kind of
hanging our steel.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
He's on an off site.
Speaker 4 (34:59):
Yeah yeah, No, Steve was checking for job opportunities and
then high tailing it up to the lake for a
few months. But I got an opportunity as CEO at Excellence,
which is another very small analytical instrumentation business, really really
unique scientific equipment, and so it felt kind of like
(35:22):
going back to the minor leagues, like it compared to
where I had been and the money that I had
been making. It felt from a career wise, like a
little bit of a setback in some respects, but in
other respects, I saw tons and tons of opportunity. Right,
they didn't have any kind of an ERP system, and
you know, they were growing. There wasn't a whole lot
(35:45):
of organization going on. It was. It was being run
by a scientist who founded the business, and an engineer
who was trying to be both ops and engineering. His
name is Mark Osgood Mark and I have become good friends.
Was a vice president of sales there by the name
of Dave Kwaievski. And Dave actually had been at Pion
(36:06):
prior to Excellence, and he's the He had heard about
me and put my name into the Excellence owner's ears
about coming in as a as a COO. So I
arrived there, I see all kinds of opportunity, but the
owner didn't really want to move as quickly as we
needed in any capacity. And so Mark and Dave and
(36:28):
I the those two week the were the best things
that came out of that opportunity. We became friends and
and the transition over to focal point. So it got
to the point where we were all so frustrated about
being there, and it was a little bit different from
Mark because he had been there for the for the longest.
But we were all talking about what was next, and
(36:48):
we were all thinking entrepreneurially, which was interesting. And it
was Dave that said to me, you know, I've been
talking with franchise consultants and I kind of looked at
him and I was like, franchise, what are you gonna
buy dunkin Donuts? Like what are we talk?
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (37:02):
Yeah, yeah, what do we want to you know, employee
minimum wage people and do all that? Like that's not
what I'm used to. And so he said, no, no, no,
there's a bunch of like solopreneur kind of like white
collar businesses out there. He says, you want to talk
with this guy? So I said sure. I talked with
him and he said, boy, you know, you'd be a
really good fit at focal Point. I said, focal Point?
(37:23):
What's that? And so he told me a little bit
about it, and I said, okay, fine, I listened and
I kind of stuck a pin in it. A couple
of weeks later, Dave comes in. He says, hey, I
talked with another franchise consultant. I really like this guy.
You ought to have another conversation with him. I said fine.
So that conversation went very much like the first conversation,
(37:45):
and the guy basically said, I could give you a
list of franchises that I think you'd be good for.
He says, but I'm telling you right now, for you,
focal Point is going to be the best fit. So
I said, Okay, fine, connect me with somebody from Focal Point,
and I what I heard and it. I loved it
so much as scared me after a little bit, because
(38:05):
it was all the best parts of what I've done
as an executive throughout my career in terms of helping
people get where they want to go, helping businesses were,
you know, become the best version of themselves without a
lot of the without a lot of the nonsense. And
so I got very excited very quickly, and I talked
with a lot of different Vocal Point coaches and Wow,
(38:28):
this this could be really great. But then I started
getting nervous, and so as I continue to have these
discovery conversations, I approached it like today's the day I'm
going to figure out why this is a bad idea
and the only bad the only thing that I could
find at the end of all of my exploration was
whether or not I was willing to bet on myself
(38:50):
to do the business development.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
I was going to say that.
Speaker 4 (38:52):
Yet one stepback that I had that I mentioned earlier
that I didn't talk about was when I was at
DJ Instruments and we owned by Dynisco. The business was
running so well they said, we don't need you to
be a general manager. We need you to be a
business development guy. Right, you've got this little machine that's
a cash register. You're just cranking out money. We want
(39:14):
more of it, naturally, And I didn't want to be
a business development person. I wanted to be a general manager.
And so I spent a year kicking and screaming about that,
pissing off the executives at Dynisco and Roper about that.
But I learned something from that experience, and so back
(39:35):
to focal point and that decision point, I said, well,
I haven't seen anything from a traditional general manager type
role open up. I've always wanted to have my own business,
never knew what it would look like, and now here's
this idea of what it could look like. And there's
this great, seemingly great organization with the same types of
(39:56):
business values and cultural values that I value. And so
if I'm ever going to try this, it felt like
the right time to do it. And so I, you know,
built out the you know, the financial plan to make
sure that we could afford for me to stop having
an income and took the plunge into entrepreneurship.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
Excellent, Yeah, to me. I mean, I know a fair
amount about focal Point, just because I've met a number
of you guys through provisors, and Yeah, it takes the
best of what you're doing and you get to do
it over and over. Right.
Speaker 4 (40:28):
Yeah, I love it. I absolutely love it. I feel
like I was you know, I've I've coached people for
a long time in different ways, especially as I got
later in my career. I found myself being able to
use a lot of what I've been exposed to and learned,
and especially some of the tough lessons. And I enjoyed,
you know, coaching people, you know, younger people up. I enjoyed,
(40:50):
you know, helping people who are at later stages in
their career, you know, get to another level. Anything that
I could do to align the businesses goals with the
personal and professional goals of the people in that organization,
that's what really gets my juices flowing. And when you
can do it right, you build something really powerful.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
So you like working with technology based OEM's original quitment manufacturers,
other manufacturing B to B service providers, and non not
for profits. That's an interesting blend.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
So the not for profit sort of happened by accident
and it's and it's kind of a personal story. So
when I bought into Focal Point, which is a franchise
you have to pay into it, I was sitting on
some money that I inherited from my dad. And when
I was dealing with my dad's a state, I saw
(41:40):
the number of checks that he was writing to different
nonprofit organizations, all like help animals, help people, that sort
of thing. He was very giving in that way, and
I said, you know what, if I'm going to start
this business and use some of his money to do it,
I'm going to honor what he was doing. And so
I will always make room for a nonprofit organization that
(42:05):
could benefit from leadership development, and I'll and I'll do
a short pro bono program ninety days typically. And I
mentioned that one day in a networking meeting and a
woman approached me. She says, I know the perfect organization
that could use some of your help, and she introduced me,
and we worked for ninety days together and then they
(42:25):
wanted to keep going. And they've been a client with
me for over three years. And I've coached a lot
of people in that organization. So I don't necessarily target it,
but I'll never.
Speaker 3 (42:34):
Say no, I love that legacy. And so the leaders
of these organizations say I'm taking this out of your
off your website. They're often frustrated and overwhelmed. Right. The
problems that you see a lot are shrinking margins, communication breakdowns,
everybody's not on the same page, sales are stagnant, leadership
(42:56):
team not aligned. Talk about out how you help them?
I'll use just a phrase, get unstuck.
Speaker 4 (43:06):
So I, first of all, I listen, Yeah right, I
ask a lot of questions and I listen, and oftentimes
the problems look and sound similar, but there's obviously nuanced
to all of it, and sometimes you're dealing with a
lot of history there. So how do I get them unstuck?
I use my experience first and foremost. I listen to
(43:27):
what they have to say, and I understand, what is
it that you actually want this to be like in
a perfect world, if you could draw this out, what
would that look like? Most of the time they have
a pretty good answer, but sometimes they don't, and I
have to give them the benefit of my experience to say,
this is what it would look like, and that could
be from any of those aspects that you mentioned. And
(43:50):
so then we start, we go to work, and I
start teaching them about themselves. I start teaching them about
what could be with their teams. Sometimes I'll work directly
with my client and some of the people on their team.
But everyone is a little bit different, and so you know,
Focal Point has great content. But I meet every client
(44:11):
where they are, right, Right. If I'm working with the
owner of a of a two million dollar business, I'm
not trying to turn them into, you know, the owner
of one hundred million dollar business. It's two very different
mind frames, right, And so you have to understand where
they are. And sometimes they know their numbers really well
and sometimes they don't. And so how they get unstuck
(44:34):
is by learning, right, I think that's that's probably the
easiest way for me to put it. They haven't had
the benefit of the experience that I've had, so they
haven't learned how to be effective business leaders or good managers,
or understand the financials anything along those lines.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
Small and can be insular, right, That's all they see
is what they've done and seen themselves, versus the breadth
of as you can bring from other businesses.
Speaker 4 (45:02):
Right. So you know, you get that small business owner
operator and they don't know how to delegate. Right. They've
had to do everything themselves for so long, and they're
afraid to let go of the rope on anything, and
that stunts the business's growth. It stunts the growth of
the people and the organization, and so that becomes that
manifests itself in turnover. Right, people get tired of being
(45:23):
there because there's no opportunity, they move on, right, And
so that's one way I help them get unstuck. I
might teach a small business owner how to actually delegate
and how to manage effectively. Right, if it's a bigger business,
maybe you've got a leader in there that's just kind
of gotten you know, I'm thinking ten fifteen to twenty million. Right,
(45:44):
they've been owner operator for so long. They've done a
good job building it, but they don't understand how to
think like a CEO. They're still thinking like owner operator
and they're.
Speaker 3 (45:53):
Too They made and we've probably made a bunch of money, right,
so there's not a ton of pain probably, right.
Speaker 4 (46:00):
Yeah, until until the pain shows up because they've hit
their ceiling. And now, you know, you don't just hit
the ceiling and stop. Usually hit the ceiling and bounce back.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
Yeah, they realize, Oh, I've never planned for an exit, right,
Or I don't you know, I don't know what the
next chapter is going to look like. Or yeah, sadly
to your point, they or somebody else gets sick.
Speaker 4 (46:19):
Yeah, it's it could be any of it, right, How
to transition to the next generation, how to get the
most out of your business when you when you sell it,
Or I've still got fifteen or twenty years left and
I've grown this thing as far as I can, and
I don't know what to do with that anymore. I'm
spread too thin. I don't know how to build a
leadership team. I don't even know where to begin. And
(46:40):
so you have to, you know, in any of those cases,
you have to understand where they're at and help them
get to whatever that next level looks like. And sometimes
they don't know what it looks like, and so that's
where you start.
Speaker 3 (46:53):
So you help them build organization. Perhaps it might be
that senior team. You know a client now going through it, Yeah, what.
Speaker 4 (47:01):
Type of You know, it's a manufacturing company, and so
you know this this owner, he's second generation, bought the
business from his dad, has done a good job building
it up, moved the business into a brand new facility
that he had built out and it got stuck. And
now it's starting to slide backwards a little bit. And
(47:22):
he's got a lot of longtime loyal employees. But the
problem is is that they he wants to get that business,
you know, more than two x where it is today,
and the people who have gotten him to where it
is today, you know, he's loyal to them. So what
do you do right? And he doesn't understand that You've
got to bring in fresh minds, more horsepower, people who
(47:45):
understand what it means to go from a ten million
dollar business to a twenty five million dollar business. And
most of the people in there right now it's maximum,
like even a ten million dollar business is beyond where
they're comfortable and operating. And so you have to bring
in some new levels of expertise the owner financial professional.
(48:08):
There's a well so for actually they do have a
fractional CFO. I love the fractional fractional fractional CFOs, fractional
you know VPS of HR sales marketing right for a bit.
This is the perfect size business to the to to
leverage fractional expertise. And so that's kind of the direction
(48:30):
I'm starting to take them.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
How do your clients find you?
Speaker 4 (48:34):
Oh, usually it's word of mouth. Right, just about everybody
has been word of mouth in some way, shape or form.
Somebody that I know, somebody that I've just.
Speaker 3 (48:41):
Met, has been good for you up until now.
Speaker 4 (48:45):
Yeah, absolutely, Provisors has given me a couple of opportunities.
Provisers has been great because I've learned a ton from others,
and I've met people who you know, are willing to help,
not just professionally, but personally. You know, I don't know
if we have enough time, but I could share.
Speaker 3 (49:03):
We actually have to wrap up. I know then I'm
gonna let you wrap it up, all right, So let
me ask this best way to contact you? Your website
is there. It'll come back in a second. Why should
someone who's listening or watching reach out.
Speaker 4 (49:19):
Because they're frustrated with their current situation. They know that
there's a better way, but they don't know how to
find that better way. Right, If you're running a business
and you know that it should be easier, a little
bit easier, it should be a little bit better, and
you're just not quite sure how to make that happen.
That's why you call me excellent.
Speaker 3 (49:38):
So the website is Stevedavrees dot focalpoint dot com. There
it is again, Steve S D e ve E Devrees
d V D E v r I E s dot
focal Point Coaching dot com. S Devrees at Focalpointcoaching dot com.
Reach out and talk to Steve if you think you
might need some help. And thank you so much. Appreciate
the time, and it's been good to have you Kevin.
Speaker 4 (50:00):
It's been an absolute pleasure. I appreciate you and what
you do.
Speaker 3 (50:03):
Thank you very much, and thanks everybody for listening and watching.
We appreciate you. This is the show about business and
often business challenges. If you've got concerns about the sales
effectiveness of your company, whether your sales team is you
or very small, or it's very large, feel free to
reach out to me on Facebook or LinkedIn at Winning
Business Radio. Drop me a note at one of my
(50:23):
many email addresses, Kevin at Winning Business Radio dot com.
Our company is Winning and Corporated. We're part of Sandler Training.
We develop salespeople and sales teams into high achievers and
sales leaders into true coaches and mentors. Listen, We're not
for everybody, but maybe we should have a conversation. Thank
you to producer and engineer one. Thank you one for
(50:44):
another job well done. Be sure to join us next Monday,
March twenty third. My returning guest will be best selling
author and salary coach founder John Gates to introduce the Crossroads,
a proven faith aligned path to help Christian corporate leaders
launch their first consulting business. Until then, this is Kevin Hallena.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
You have been listening to Winning Business Radio with your host,
Kevin Helena. If you missed any part of this episode,
The podcast is available on Talk for Podcasting and iHeartRadio.
For more information and questions, go to Winning Business Radio
dot com or check us out on social media. Tune
in again next week and every Monday at four pm
Eastern Time to listen live to Winning Business Radio on
(51:27):
W four CY Radio W four cy dot com. Until then,
let's succeed where others have failed and win in business
with Kevin Halenan and Winning Business Radio
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(00:20):
choosing W four CY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Churchill said, those who failed to learn from history are
condemned to repeat it. Kevin helen n believes that certainly
applies to business. Welcome to Winning Business Radio here at
W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com
and now your host, Kevin.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Helena, Thanks for joining in again today, everybody. I'm Kevin
Hallanan and welcome back to Winning Business TV and Radio
on W four cy DO. And of course we're streaming
live on talk for the number four TV dot com
and we're live on Facebook and that's at Winning Business Radio.
(01:08):
And of course we're available in podcasts after the live
show on wherever you see, your see or hear your content.
That's YouTube, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple Again. The list goes on
anywhere you listen to your podcast or radio content. The
mission of winning business radio and TV, as regular viewers
(01:29):
and listeners know, is to offer insights and advice to
help people avoid the mistakes of others, to learn best practices.
Those are the how tos, the what toos, the what
not tos. Also and to be challenged and hopefully to
be inspired by the successes of others. Those others are
consultants and coaches, advisors, authors, founders and owners and entrepreneurs,
(01:50):
people with expertise. But you know, virtually every successful person
I've ever had a chance to talk to has had
some form of failure in their lives and careers. So,
as I said, say, every week, while we all have
to get our knees skinned once in a while, I'm
driven to keep those scrapes from needing major surgery. Let's
endeavor to learn from history so we don't repeat it.
I've spent the better part of my career equipping businesses
(02:11):
to grow from solopreneurs to small and medium sized companies
all the way up to the fortune fifty. I've seen
some of those companies win and to varying degrees. I've
seen some fail I've had the opportunity to rub elbows
with some of the highest performing people around and with
some who probably should have found other professions. And in
my own businesses, I've had lots of success, but some
failures too. I like to think I've learned a lot
(02:33):
from those experiences. So yeah, you're going to hear from me,
but mostly you'll hear from our guests. Those experts, consultants, coaches, advisors, authors,
founders and owners and entrepreneurs. And today my guest is
Steve Devrees, certified Business and executive coach with Focal Point
and founder of Devirees Enterprises. Here's Steve's bio. Steve Devrees
has dedicated his career to transforming organizations into high performing,
(02:56):
future ready businesses. As a certified business and executive coach
with over twenty five years of experience, he's worked with
countless technology based OEMs, manufacturing companies, and service providers to
improve team performance and strategic execution. Steve specializes in equipping
leaders with the tools and strategies to navigate complex challenges,
(03:16):
whether it's developing leaders, improving financial management, or preparing for
organizational succession. His hands on approach helps clients see tangible results,
often within months. His clients have achieved fifty excuse me,
twenty to fifty percent profitability increases in just twelve months,
twenty five percent in sales growth after implementing tailored strategies,
(03:38):
in fifty percent reductions, and leadership turnover. Steve loves mentoring
and up and coming leaders to maximize their impact. He's
an avid outdoors enthusiast, particularly in the New Hampshire lakes
and mountains. He enjoys volunteering his time as a coach
in youth sports and advising entrepreneurial students. Steve's favorite quote
is success is not final, failure is not fatal. It's
(04:01):
the courage to continue that counts Winston Churchill, man of
My Own Heart. He earned his BS in Business Administration
and Management at UMS Lowell, as well as his MBA
in management. Steve coaches because he enjoys helping people succeed.
He finds the most meeting in supporting leaders through tough moments,
when decisions feel heavy, pressures high, and clarity is hard
(04:22):
to find. Coaching allows Steve to bring a calming, experienced
presence to those situations, helping leaders think clearly enact with confidence.
Clients value his perspective, steadiness and accountability. Many say they
begin anticipating the questions he will ask and the standards
he will hold them to, evidence that the work has
become part of how they lead. Steve resides in Windham,
(04:43):
New Hampshire, with his wife Kim, and their two children,
Page and Sam. Steve. Welcome to Winning Business Radio.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
Thank you so much for having Kevin. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
You got it. I know you're busy and I appreciate it.
So tell us about your family. Start with you wife, Kim.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
Yeah. So, Kim and I met when we were both
attending Umassilole one hundred years ago. Some people know this.
Our first date was on Valentine's Day. Cool, and I
knew from that moment, like that first date, I was done.
We were engaged less than a year later and married
(05:18):
about a year and a half after that. And it's
been well, I will say, mostly smooth sailing of marriages ever,
but smooth sailing all the way since. So this year
will be year number anniversary twenty seven.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Oh, congratulations. And does she work?
Speaker 4 (05:36):
She does. She's director of project management, and I guess
the right hand person for the COO of a Boulder,
Colorado based pet food company.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Very cool, very cool. Yeah, and your kids page is
twenty three SAMs eighteen.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
Tell us about them so pages. She is off doing
the adulting thing, as she likes to say. So. She
lives in Boston, graduated from the University of New England
a little over a year ago, and you know, yeah,
it's gorgeous up there, and she she is making her
way as a young adult. And my son Sam, who
(06:13):
is a freshman at Plymouth State University, he's he's on
spring break this week, living the life of luxury. Uh,
one floor below me right now. I can hear him
talking to his friends as we speak.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
That's funny, that's funny. Uh. They like the outdoors too, absolutely.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
Yeah. We have a we have a boat that we
we take out up on one of asaki and and
you know, it's just it's lots of day trips. But
you know, we'll parley that into a one week stay
at a at an airbnb somewhere up there, and the
whole family comes up and they bring their friends and
and we have a good time, and you know, we'll
we'll always do the outdoor things, the the hiking and
(06:55):
voting and whatever comes our way.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Yeah, my family and another family cross the street from us.
We lived in Midfield, and the two families got together
and bought a big old farmhouse on twenty Route twenty
five between Plymouth and Romney and Wentworth. And so I
spent a ton of time as a kid. I loved
New Hampshire up there, you know.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
So yeah, I mean my childhood was all like the
summer vacations were all one of asaki or or there
was a period of time at Newfound Lake as well.
So I just I love the New Hampshire Lakes region.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
It's love them both. Newfound we had we had a
piece of land on Newfound that my parents didn't end
up developing, the end up selling it, but we were
going to be there. We did swim there a lot.
So all right, So you and Bill ricka Mass tell
us about the town and what it was like to
grow up there.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
Oh geez, what can I say about Bill Rica So
Merrimack Valley town, you know, I mean for me, it
was kind of a normal upbringing. I had my crew
of friends, you know. We uh, we hung out all
over town playing at a lot of basketball together, a
lot of pick up sports, right, I mean football, baseball,
all that good stuff, driving around, getting into a little
(08:04):
bit of trouble here and there, right, that was all
part of it. I mean bill Rica itself is I
think it. For a long time it was very very
much a blue collar kind of town, and I think
it's morphed into more of a mix of blue collar,
white collar types of professions, tons of industry there. Funny enough. So,
(08:26):
I mean I had my first, you know, first real
job there in bill Rica. And you know, when I
graduated UMass Lowell, I ended up working at a business
in bill Rica for nineteen years. That was not five
minutes from my parents' house where I grew up. And
I couldn't get out of bill Rica for a period
of time. I couldn't get out of Billrica even if
(08:48):
I tried. It was it was kind of crazy.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Just when you thought you got out, Yeah, they pulled
me back in, all right? And how did you make
it to wind Windams, a nice town in New Hampshire.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
Yeah. So, as I mentioned earlier, my wife and I
met at UMass loll And so when we when we graduated,
we ended up buying our first house in Loll just
before just before we got married, and then sold that
house and bought another house in Loll. We were trying
(09:19):
to move back to the original neighborhood where we started.
We made a mistake in terms of the location. You
know that when when you hear people talk about location, location, location,
they are one hundred and twenty percent right, because I
lived in a in a new house on a street
in a neighborhood that we didn't absolutely love and we
couldn't wait to get out of there, and when the
(09:41):
housing market crashed, we ended up we were underwater on
that house. We ended up paying to get out of it.
And we were trying to move back to the neighborhood
where we had started because that's where we really wanted
to be and couldn't find the type of house that
we wanted. We had some other family dynamics going on
(10:02):
that were basically pointing to us to leave Loll, and
we had looked on and off over the years in
southern New Hampshire because we both really liked New Hampshire
and so the time, you know, at that point you
could buy low into into Windom, Yes, you can't really
do that now, but at that time we were able
to buy Low and Windom and it's been great for us.
(10:23):
I mean, great school system, great neighborhoods. Uh, you know,
met a lot of really really good friends here, so
it's it's been good to us.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Nice all right. So now consider high school years, maybe
early college. Who were your early influencers.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Oh, I'm going to tell you about people that no
one's ever heard of before unless you were you. You
were in the types of businesses the the early I
was very lucky. I tell people this a lot. My
early influencers were actually the bosses that I worked for
as a as a teenage kid. I was very fortunate
(11:00):
to work for some really smart people, good people, people
who had the patience to show me the ropes. I
fell in love with business at a young age, and
I knew I wanted to be in business leadership, probably
when I was fifteen years old. Very first job, first
w two job. Anyway, I worked at a liquor store
(11:23):
and I worked in the back where I sorted all
of the bottles and cans that people would return, you know,
for the nickel. And I mean it was just a
perfect job for a you know, a young high school kid,
but it was it was nasty, and I was, you know,
cleaning toilets for the employees and taking the trash out
and doing all these things. But the guy who owned
(11:46):
the store, his name's Vinnie Straziri. I think he's since
sold the store and retired. But I was in and
out of the little corner store next to the liquor
store all the time as a kid, and he approached
me one day and said, you need a job, and
as I heard you looking, and I said, yeah, I
have been looking for a job. So he hired me,
and he taught me so much about business because I
would finish up my work and I would go and
(12:07):
see him. I'd see all these papers out all over
his desk, and I was always very curious about it,
and i'd be asking, you know, the general ledger books
and purchase orders and packing slips and all these different things,
and I would be asking him questions, probably to the
point where I annoyed him, but I just kind of
loved how it all went together, and so that got
(12:28):
me curious about business. And then I moved on from there.
And I won't take you through my entire pre college resume,
but suffice to say, each stop of the way, I
met managers who really wanted to take me under their
wing and teach me different things. And it built my
love of business management and leadership. You know, for many years,
(12:52):
right through college, I had all kinds of part time
jobs through college. I just got lucky, you know, I
got lucky in that I was exposed to so many
good people. We hear about bad bosses all the time,
and I see it with my clients sometimes. I see
the bad bosses within their organizations and I see the
impact that it has on the people that report to them.
(13:12):
And honestly, that's who I coach for. I coach for
those people who wake up every day and slog off
to work because you know, they need the paycheck, but
they're miserable, and it's because they're working for a poorly
run team or a poorly run company. And I want
them to have a good experience as much as I
want the owners of the business to do well. So
(13:33):
and that all came from learning from these people who
had been in business, and I was lucky enough to
be exposed to love that.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
All right, we're going to take our first commercial break
right here. We will be back in one minute, everybody,
We're going to be back in about sixty seconds with
Steve Debrees.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helenet on
W four CIO. That's W four cy dot com. Don't
go away. More helpful information is coming right up right
here on Winning Business Radio.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Best and Wealth Management is family owned for two generations.
They take pride in thoughtful financial planning and wealth management
with a family feel for your closely held family business.
Best in Wealth Management focuses on deep planning, integrating your
business planning with personal They will help put your money
to work and your mind at ease. Go to Bestinwealthmanagement
(14:32):
dot com for more information. Advisory service is offered through
Commonwealth Financial Network, a registered investment advisor. Join the Best
Family and let our family advise your family. That's Bestinwealthmanagement
dot com for your complementary initial consultation.
Speaker 5 (14:52):
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now is your chance. Be a radio show guest on
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Speaker 2 (15:24):
And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helena,
presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in
mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again
is Kevin Helena.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
All right, we are back with Steve Davirees, certified business
and executive coach with Focal Point and founder of Debrees Enterprises. Enterprises. Sorry,
how did you make it to DJ Instruments? And I
know looked like there are a couple iterations. It was
purchased maybe twice.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
Yeah, So so DJ Instruments was a design and manufacturing
company for custom sensors. How I found them? It's actually
kind of a fun story. So you know, when you're
in college, you get these job faares, right, So at
UMass loll it was no different. They had the job fares.
Lots of big companies looking for, you know, young graduates
(16:22):
that they can kind of chew up and spit out
and maybe wanted to stick. And I didn't want to
do that. I was working for Putnam Investments at the
time that I graduated and they were offering me work
and I just I didn't want to be there. I
could see I was just going to be a number.
I was looking for something smaller, where I felt like
I could learn a lot and make a difference and
(16:43):
not just kind of crank along as a you know,
as a as a cog in the wheel. So I
went to the career services office at UMass loll and
I said, listen, all these all these job fare, big
companies that they're not doing it for me. What else
is there? There must be something? And they said, oh, yeah,
there is. And you know, this was before the Internet
was really you know, a big thing, so dating myself certainly.
(17:07):
But the woman came along and handed me this thick
binder boom, drops it on the table and says, these
are all local companies looking to hire. Flip through this
and see if anything catches your attention. So I sat
in that career services office for I don't know how long,
flipping one page after another, reading job descriptions. About halfway
(17:30):
through I read this one from DJ Instruments and it
was for a purchasing manager role. And I read through
it and it just it spoke to me. And I said,
that's it, that's the one. So I responded, I interviewed,
and I got the job and I was there for
nineteen years.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Wow, with progressing a responsibility. You look like you left
as VP COO.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
Yeah. So started out in purchasing and I had one
person reporting to me. I had to put all kinds
of things into place. They had purchased an MRP system
about a year before I got there, and they tinkered
with it but never did anything. So I had to
learn what an MRP system was and how to build
it up, because he handed that to me as a project,
(18:14):
as well as getting all of their inventory under control.
Inventory was all over the place. There was no control.
They had little index cards where they supposedly kept counts
and stuff coming in and stuff going out. It wasn't
controlled terribly well at all. Did well with that. I
probably made a few enemies along the way for the
(18:34):
people who liked having free access to the materials. But
we got it ountder control. We started reducing our overall
footprint in terms of the amount that we had in
inventory and built up the MRP system. And then the
owner who was my boss, asked me to take on
(18:55):
more of an operations leadership role. So now I had
all those people who I had ticked off that you know,
I took all their inventory away and made them ask
nicely for it. They now reported to me and did
that for a couple of years. And then one day
the owner called me, and his name's Mike Testa, another
example of a phenomenal boss that I learned a ton from.
(19:18):
He called me into his office and he said, you
see me parading all these people in suits in and
out of here the last couple of weeks. Said yeah,
what is that all about? He says, well, I've been
I've been interviewing for a general manager or you know,
a chief operating officer. And he said, because I can't
be in the business. His wife had become very sick
and he needed to be with them. Yeah, and he says,
here's the deal. He says, they're all very capable, he says,
(19:41):
but I don't trust them. I trust you. And he
had been grooming me, you know, to to elevate elevate
me in the in the business, and it's what I wanted.
But he literally took the key to the building out
of his pocket and slid it across the desk. And said,
I'm going to promote you. You're in shock arch, it's
your show to run. Lean on the staff because we
(20:04):
had a very seasoned staff there. He said, lean on
the staff, don't screw it up. I'll check in from
time to time. And he got up and he left. Well,
and I sat there with this, Yeah, I mean, it
was it was. It was great that he trusted me,
and it was exactly what I wanted, but it was
exactly the wrong way to that. I that I wanted
to get it right. It felt like I had probably
(20:25):
earned the shot, but not at the expense of, you know,
his family situation. And so I went home that night
and I didn't know how to feel. And I remember
the conversation with with Kim and she said, well, listen,
regardless of how you got here, you're here, and so
what are you going to do with it? And so
I thought a lot that I don't think I slept
(20:46):
a wink that night, and I had to go into
work the next day and address, you know, everybody and
kind of let them know what was going on. And
he was a very very beloved leader in the business.
So you can imagine that I've got these huge shoes
to fill everybody feeling, you know, the pain of what
he and his family are going through. And so that
(21:07):
was that was the first lesson that I had in
becoming a leader and trying to find your own path
and your own And what I learned is you can't
replace those people. You have to find your own path
and do things. You know, you can learn from them,
but you kind of have to do things a little
(21:27):
bit differently. You're just in your own style. And so
that's when I started learning that lesson, and I was
there for a long time. It was sold. He came
back to the business a couple of years later and
he just he wasn't going to stay in the business,
so he decided to sell it, and that's when it
was acquired by a much larger sensor company, dy Nisco.
At the same time, Dynisco was acquired by a Roper,
(21:50):
which is a very large, publicly traded company. So imagine,
you know, I had found my footing as the leader
of this little it felt like a family business, twenty
five people, and now all of a sudden, I have
to deal with six or seven new bosses at Dynisco,
and they have new bosses at Roper and I'm getting
(22:10):
to learn all of them while trying to you know,
steer the ship at Little DJ Instruments. So that was
a really exciting, scary time in my life.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
But it talks you about corporate.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
Oh boy did it. What was interesting is is that
the the guys who were all the vps and the
president of Dynisco, they all had equity in that business.
So most of them, at different points in times, scattered
right they left the business. There was only one gentleman
that stuck around. He was the engineering leader. And it
(22:47):
was all new leaders. From sales, to marketing, to ops
to to finance. They all came in, so I had
to learn all of them. And then they brought me
into Roper right, and Roper was always doing these you know,
Roper is a portfolio company, so they had, you know,
twenty million dollar businesses, fifty two hundred million dollar businesses,
(23:10):
and here's Little DJ Instruments. At the time, I think
we're probably four or five million in revenue. And I
had but I had to learn how to operate DJ
Instruments as a business unit just like those larger ones,
and present it just like those larger ones. So I
learned how to speak corporate in that environment. But more importantly,
I learned how to take what corporate expected and boil
(23:33):
it down into something that worked for a small business.
And that's what I you know, a lot of what
I do with my clients today.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
All right. So then you went over equipment Depot as
general manager. You had another position at Pion as a GM.
Talk about those two companies and roles as GM.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
So the Equipment Depot was was actually it was. It
was under a different name at that point in time.
So it was a New England Industrial truck an e
T and any it was a brand forklifts yeah, sorry,
(24:12):
a forklift dealership and so any it had built quite
a reputation in New England as one of the premier
forklift dealers and it was built up by a family.
Family ended up selling it to the manufacturer of the
primary forklift line at the time. It was Nissan. It
became Unit Carriers. I won't bore you with all the
(24:34):
different names, but ultimately the reason that happened is because
the forklift manufacturer was acquired by Mitsubishi. So someone at
Mitsupichee Japan said we want to start to own the
sales channel. The way that whole industry works is you know,
either you own all of your factory stores like a
(24:55):
Crown forklift, right, so it's factory and they own all
this stores, or you sold through independent dealers. Mitsubishi said,
we want to own some dealers and they instructed the
Chicago area based factory go buy a couple of dealerships. Well,
they bought one in Wisconsin out in the Madison not Madison,
doesn't matter in Wisconsin, and one here in New England.
(25:20):
The family had been not been building the business, preparing
it for the future. They weren't managing pricing, They really
weren't managing anything. But they sold it and moved on,
other than owning the building, of course, which maybe we'll
get to that in a minute, but they moved on
(25:41):
and that business they put it. So the factory put
in some general manager who showed up at ten and
left at two, and things started to slide and everybody
stopped trusting each other, and so it got to the
point where that twenty million dollar year business was completely
upside down and they were losing big money every year.
And someone in Japan had stuck their neck out with
(26:03):
this decision, and they were keeping the business afloat and
they that's when they found me. And you know, they
approached me about the job. I said, why why would
you want me? I know nothing about forklifts or your industry.
I come from a completely different business model. And they said,
it's it's not your knowledge of forklifts and so forth
that we're interested in. You understand how to run a
(26:26):
local business unit and do it profitably while collaborating with
a large, publicly traded parent company. And we think, and
we think that that would be you know, exactly what
we need. And so I was hired to do that turnaround.
It was the toughest three and a half years of
my professional life. They told me it would take four years.
(26:49):
We got it done in about three. But I saw
a lot in that industry that I knew that I
didn't want to be there over the long haul. I
wanted I wanted the challenge, right. I said, if I
can learn a new industry and a new business model
and helped turn it around, then that's a pretty good
feather in my cap. So that's what attracted me to it.
(27:09):
I like a good challenge and I got what I
was I got what I asked for. That there's no
doubt about that, but I didn't. It wasn't an industry
that I wanted to stay in. So that's how I
ended up at Pion. So at that time, it was
just before COVID had hit, and I was being recruited
by two different companies, Pion being one of them. The
(27:33):
other one was a small instrumentation company here in New Hampshire.
By all accounts of that business didn't seem terribly exciting.
It hadn't grown a lot, It was just kind of
steady state. It was a French owned business, and you know,
it just looked like I and the president was retiring
(27:53):
president of thirty forty years. They were looking for someone
to come and take the torch and that was the
safe path. And I thought, you know, coming off of
this turnaround work that I had done and learning to
live with my hair on fire all the time, it
seemed a little bit ho hum. And while I probably
(28:14):
could have used a little ho hum, I knew that
it wouldn't be good for a long time, and so
I went to Pion, which looked like it had a
ton of upside. But here's what happened. COVID hit and
so Pinon was a small business. There was you know,
fifteen or twenty people and they had a small division
in the UK. The last thing I did before leaving
(28:39):
New England Industrial Truck was to sign off on furloughs.
I couldn't keep the technicians working any longer. Nobody's business
was open. I brought them all in the house and
because we had just relocated the business to save some money,
I brought them all in house, kept them working for
a couple of weeks upfitting the place, and then I
had to There was left no more work left for them,
(29:01):
so I have to sign off. So I go to
Pion and I can see a ton of operational needs
and but you can't. There's nobody coming into work right.
And if you do go into work, you're wearing a mask.
Everybody's got social distancing and sadly they're they're chief scientists
(29:22):
passed away due to COVID man. So now imagine you're
the new general manager. You're there working with the owners.
I would say that one owner wanted me there and
the other one that didn't. It was a husband and
wife owner owner set. Even though it was a tough dynamic,
but again I had it's pretty cocky and I hadn't
(29:46):
had any major major I had one major setback. I
think of my minor setback in my career up to
that point, and so I thought, I can, I can
do this right, I will win, I will win them
over and and do this, and I can sees so
much opportunity. Well, between the social distancing and losing of
a key employee, a beloved employee, nobody really knew what
(30:11):
was going on with the world, right, and so here
I am trying to gain traction in an environment where
everybody's feeling loss. I had never even met the gentleman
who passed away, and so it became apparent pretty quickly
that this was not going to be for the long haul.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
And so a lot of property, you know, capital with
them too, right.
Speaker 4 (30:34):
Sure, yeah, there was there was that concern. It was
the you know, it was a small business, so and
it was capital equipment. So nobody was signing off on
one hundred hundred and fifty thousand dollars apex. At that
point in time. There was a services component to the
pion business, but again those services were catering to people
(30:56):
in laboratories, and the laboratories weren't open. Nothing was happening.
So at ninety days, you know, there were a lot
of dynamics going on that I didn't like, and I'm
not I don't really want to get into it here,
but suffice to say it wasn't feeling like the right fit.
And on my ninety day review, I had a list
of things basically that it needed to change if if
(31:17):
it was going to make sense for me to stay.
And they had already arrived at that conclusion, like, we
don't know what's going on in the world, but we
know that we can't afford you to stick around here
while we can't really have any of the change that
you came here to do in the first place. So
we parted of ways. It was just you know, a
COVID casualty, if you will. Yeah, I probably would have
(31:43):
been fine if I had gone the boring path right
with that other.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
Operatiy had there been no COVID, But who knew. I mean, right,
there's no way we wouldn't write right right, we're going
to take our we're going to take our second break.
Right there, we'll come right back to the to the
end of that talk about excelums and then right into
focal point right after the break.
Speaker 4 (31:59):
We right back.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Hallane on
W four CY Radio. That's W four CWY dot com.
Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up
right here on Winning Business Radio.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
Best in Wealth Management is family owned for two generations.
They take pride in thoughtful financial planning and wealth management
with a family feel for your closely held family business.
Best in Wealth Management focuses on deep planning, integrating your
business planning with personal They will help put your money
to work and your mind at ease. Go to Bestinwealthmanagement
(32:42):
dot com for more information. Advisory services offered through Commonwealth
Financial Network a registered investment advisor. Join the best Family
and let our family advise your family. That's Bestinwealthmanagement dot
com for your complementary initial consultation.
Speaker 6 (33:00):
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(33:20):
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Speaker 2 (33:33):
And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene,
presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in
mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again
is Kevin Helene.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
All right, we're back with Steve Debrees, certified business and
executive coach with Focal Point and founder of Debrees Enterprises.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
Wrap up.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Sorry for the abrupt change there or the abrupt exit there.
I just looked at the clock. Wrap up that story
and we'll get into uh exelums and focal points.
Speaker 4 (34:10):
Well, I think the wrap up is, you know, I
was a bit of a COVID casualty, right there was
there was nothing that I could do at that particular
point in time at the start of COVID that met
the charter of of why I was brought in in
the first place, which was to help the the owners
of the business back away and to take the business,
you know, into sort of its next generation of what
(34:33):
whatever it was going to be, right, it just didn't
It didn't work out, and these things happened from time
to time. It's it's not anybody's fault. Nobody saw COVID coming.
So I was out of work that summer, which was
actually okay because yeah, yeah, nobody was working. I had
just bought my boat, and so you know, I spent
(34:54):
a lot of time during the week just kind of
hanging our steel.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
He's on an off site.
Speaker 4 (34:59):
Yeah yeah, No, Steve was checking for job opportunities and
then high tailing it up to the lake for a
few months. But I got an opportunity as CEO at Excellence,
which is another very small analytical instrumentation business, really really
unique scientific equipment, and so it felt kind of like
(35:22):
going back to the minor leagues, like it compared to
where I had been and the money that I had
been making. It felt from a career wise, like a
little bit of a setback in some respects, but in
other respects, I saw tons and tons of opportunity. Right,
they didn't have any kind of an ERP system, and
you know, they were growing. There wasn't a whole lot
(35:45):
of organization going on. It was. It was being run
by a scientist who founded the business, and an engineer
who was trying to be both ops and engineering. His
name is Mark Osgood Mark and I have become good friends.
Was a vice president of sales there by the name
of Dave Kwaievski. And Dave actually had been at Pion
(36:06):
prior to Excellence, and he's the He had heard about
me and put my name into the Excellence owner's ears
about coming in as a as a COO. So I
arrived there, I see all kinds of opportunity, but the
owner didn't really want to move as quickly as we
needed in any capacity. And so Mark and Dave and
(36:28):
I the those two week the were the best things
that came out of that opportunity. We became friends and
and the transition over to focal point. So it got
to the point where we were all so frustrated about
being there, and it was a little bit different from
Mark because he had been there for the for the longest.
But we were all talking about what was next, and
(36:48):
we were all thinking entrepreneurially, which was interesting. And it
was Dave that said to me, you know, I've been
talking with franchise consultants and I kind of looked at
him and I was like, franchise, what are you gonna
buy dunkin Donuts? Like what are we talk?
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (37:02):
Yeah, yeah, what do we want to you know, employee
minimum wage people and do all that? Like that's not
what I'm used to. And so he said, no, no, no,
there's a bunch of like solopreneur kind of like white
collar businesses out there. He says, you want to talk
with this guy? So I said sure. I talked with
him and he said, boy, you know, you'd be a
really good fit at focal Point. I said, focal Point?
(37:23):
What's that? And so he told me a little bit
about it, and I said, okay, fine, I listened and
I kind of stuck a pin in it. A couple
of weeks later, Dave comes in. He says, hey, I
talked with another franchise consultant. I really like this guy.
You ought to have another conversation with him. I said fine.
So that conversation went very much like the first conversation,
(37:45):
and the guy basically said, I could give you a
list of franchises that I think you'd be good for.
He says, but I'm telling you right now, for you,
focal Point is going to be the best fit. So
I said, Okay, fine, connect me with somebody from Focal Point,
and I what I heard and it. I loved it
so much as scared me after a little bit, because
(38:05):
it was all the best parts of what I've done
as an executive throughout my career in terms of helping
people get where they want to go, helping businesses were,
you know, become the best version of themselves without a
lot of the without a lot of the nonsense. And
so I got very excited very quickly, and I talked
with a lot of different Vocal Point coaches and Wow,
(38:28):
this this could be really great. But then I started
getting nervous, and so as I continue to have these
discovery conversations, I approached it like today's the day I'm
going to figure out why this is a bad idea
and the only bad the only thing that I could
find at the end of all of my exploration was
whether or not I was willing to bet on myself
(38:50):
to do the business development.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
I was going to say that.
Speaker 4 (38:52):
Yet one stepback that I had that I mentioned earlier
that I didn't talk about was when I was at
DJ Instruments and we owned by Dynisco. The business was
running so well they said, we don't need you to
be a general manager. We need you to be a
business development guy. Right, you've got this little machine that's
a cash register. You're just cranking out money. We want
(39:14):
more of it, naturally, And I didn't want to be
a business development person. I wanted to be a general manager.
And so I spent a year kicking and screaming about that,
pissing off the executives at Dynisco and Roper about that.
But I learned something from that experience, and so back
(39:35):
to focal point and that decision point, I said, well,
I haven't seen anything from a traditional general manager type
role open up. I've always wanted to have my own business,
never knew what it would look like, and now here's
this idea of what it could look like. And there's
this great, seemingly great organization with the same types of
(39:56):
business values and cultural values that I value. And so
if I'm ever going to try this, it felt like
the right time to do it. And so I, you know,
built out the you know, the financial plan to make
sure that we could afford for me to stop having
an income and took the plunge into entrepreneurship.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
Excellent, Yeah, to me. I mean, I know a fair
amount about focal Point, just because I've met a number
of you guys through provisors, and Yeah, it takes the
best of what you're doing and you get to do
it over and over. Right.
Speaker 4 (40:28):
Yeah, I love it. I absolutely love it. I feel
like I was you know, I've I've coached people for
a long time in different ways, especially as I got
later in my career. I found myself being able to
use a lot of what I've been exposed to and learned,
and especially some of the tough lessons. And I enjoyed,
you know, coaching people, you know, younger people up. I enjoyed,
(40:50):
you know, helping people who are at later stages in
their career, you know, get to another level. Anything that
I could do to align the businesses goals with the
personal and professional goals of the people in that organization,
that's what really gets my juices flowing. And when you
can do it right, you build something really powerful.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
So you like working with technology based OEM's original quitment manufacturers,
other manufacturing B to B service providers, and non not
for profits. That's an interesting blend.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
So the not for profit sort of happened by accident
and it's and it's kind of a personal story. So
when I bought into Focal Point, which is a franchise
you have to pay into it, I was sitting on
some money that I inherited from my dad. And when
I was dealing with my dad's a state, I saw
(41:40):
the number of checks that he was writing to different
nonprofit organizations, all like help animals, help people, that sort
of thing. He was very giving in that way, and
I said, you know what, if I'm going to start
this business and use some of his money to do it,
I'm going to honor what he was doing. And so
I will always make room for a nonprofit organization that
(42:05):
could benefit from leadership development, and I'll and I'll do
a short pro bono program ninety days typically. And I
mentioned that one day in a networking meeting and a
woman approached me. She says, I know the perfect organization
that could use some of your help, and she introduced me,
and we worked for ninety days together and then they
(42:25):
wanted to keep going. And they've been a client with
me for over three years. And I've coached a lot
of people in that organization. So I don't necessarily target it,
but I'll never.
Speaker 3 (42:34):
Say no, I love that legacy. And so the leaders
of these organizations say I'm taking this out of your
off your website. They're often frustrated and overwhelmed. Right. The
problems that you see a lot are shrinking margins, communication breakdowns,
everybody's not on the same page, sales are stagnant, leadership
(42:56):
team not aligned. Talk about out how you help them?
I'll use just a phrase, get unstuck.
Speaker 4 (43:06):
So I, first of all, I listen, Yeah right, I
ask a lot of questions and I listen, and oftentimes
the problems look and sound similar, but there's obviously nuanced
to all of it, and sometimes you're dealing with a
lot of history there. So how do I get them unstuck?
I use my experience first and foremost. I listen to
(43:27):
what they have to say, and I understand, what is
it that you actually want this to be like in
a perfect world, if you could draw this out, what
would that look like? Most of the time they have
a pretty good answer, but sometimes they don't, and I
have to give them the benefit of my experience to say,
this is what it would look like, and that could
be from any of those aspects that you mentioned. And
(43:50):
so then we start, we go to work, and I
start teaching them about themselves. I start teaching them about
what could be with their teams. Sometimes I'll work directly
with my client and some of the people on their team.
But everyone is a little bit different, and so you know,
Focal Point has great content. But I meet every client
(44:11):
where they are, right, Right. If I'm working with the
owner of a of a two million dollar business, I'm
not trying to turn them into, you know, the owner
of one hundred million dollar business. It's two very different
mind frames, right, And so you have to understand where
they are. And sometimes they know their numbers really well
and sometimes they don't. And so how they get unstuck
(44:34):
is by learning, right, I think that's that's probably the
easiest way for me to put it. They haven't had
the benefit of the experience that I've had, so they
haven't learned how to be effective business leaders or good managers,
or understand the financials anything along those lines.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
Small and can be insular, right, That's all they see
is what they've done and seen themselves, versus the breadth
of as you can bring from other businesses.
Speaker 4 (45:02):
Right. So you know, you get that small business owner
operator and they don't know how to delegate. Right. They've
had to do everything themselves for so long, and they're
afraid to let go of the rope on anything, and
that stunts the business's growth. It stunts the growth of
the people and the organization, and so that becomes that
manifests itself in turnover. Right, people get tired of being
(45:23):
there because there's no opportunity, they move on, right, And
so that's one way I help them get unstuck. I
might teach a small business owner how to actually delegate
and how to manage effectively. Right, if it's a bigger business,
maybe you've got a leader in there that's just kind
of gotten you know, I'm thinking ten fifteen to twenty million. Right,
(45:44):
they've been owner operator for so long. They've done a
good job building it, but they don't understand how to
think like a CEO. They're still thinking like owner operator
and they're.
Speaker 3 (45:53):
Too They made and we've probably made a bunch of money, right,
so there's not a ton of pain probably, right.
Speaker 4 (46:00):
Yeah, until until the pain shows up because they've hit
their ceiling. And now, you know, you don't just hit
the ceiling and stop. Usually hit the ceiling and bounce back.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
Yeah, they realize, Oh, I've never planned for an exit, right,
Or I don't you know, I don't know what the
next chapter is going to look like. Or yeah, sadly
to your point, they or somebody else gets sick.
Speaker 4 (46:19):
Yeah, it's it could be any of it, right, How
to transition to the next generation, how to get the
most out of your business when you when you sell it,
Or I've still got fifteen or twenty years left and
I've grown this thing as far as I can, and
I don't know what to do with that anymore. I'm
spread too thin. I don't know how to build a
leadership team. I don't even know where to begin. And
(46:40):
so you have to, you know, in any of those cases,
you have to understand where they're at and help them
get to whatever that next level looks like. And sometimes
they don't know what it looks like, and so that's
where you start.
Speaker 3 (46:53):
So you help them build organization. Perhaps it might be
that senior team. You know a client now going through it, Yeah, what.
Speaker 4 (47:01):
Type of You know, it's a manufacturing company, and so
you know this this owner, he's second generation, bought the
business from his dad, has done a good job building
it up, moved the business into a brand new facility
that he had built out and it got stuck. And
now it's starting to slide backwards a little bit. And
(47:22):
he's got a lot of longtime loyal employees. But the
problem is is that they he wants to get that business,
you know, more than two x where it is today,
and the people who have gotten him to where it
is today, you know, he's loyal to them. So what
do you do right? And he doesn't understand that You've
got to bring in fresh minds, more horsepower, people who
(47:45):
understand what it means to go from a ten million
dollar business to a twenty five million dollar business. And
most of the people in there right now it's maximum,
like even a ten million dollar business is beyond where
they're comfortable and operating. And so you have to bring
in some new levels of expertise the owner financial professional.
(48:08):
There's a well so for actually they do have a
fractional CFO. I love the fractional fractional fractional CFOs, fractional
you know VPS of HR sales marketing right for a bit.
This is the perfect size business to the to to
leverage fractional expertise. And so that's kind of the direction
(48:30):
I'm starting to take them.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
How do your clients find you?
Speaker 4 (48:34):
Oh, usually it's word of mouth. Right, just about everybody
has been word of mouth in some way, shape or form.
Somebody that I know, somebody that I've just.
Speaker 3 (48:41):
Met, has been good for you up until now.
Speaker 4 (48:45):
Yeah, absolutely, Provisors has given me a couple of opportunities.
Provisers has been great because I've learned a ton from others,
and I've met people who you know, are willing to help,
not just professionally, but personally. You know, I don't know
if we have enough time, but I could share.
Speaker 3 (49:03):
We actually have to wrap up. I know then I'm
gonna let you wrap it up, all right, So let
me ask this best way to contact you? Your website
is there. It'll come back in a second. Why should
someone who's listening or watching reach out.
Speaker 4 (49:19):
Because they're frustrated with their current situation. They know that
there's a better way, but they don't know how to
find that better way. Right, If you're running a business
and you know that it should be easier, a little
bit easier, it should be a little bit better, and
you're just not quite sure how to make that happen.
That's why you call me excellent.
Speaker 3 (49:38):
So the website is Stevedavrees dot focalpoint dot com. There
it is again, Steve S D e ve E Devrees
d V D E v r I E s dot
focal Point Coaching dot com. S Devrees at Focalpointcoaching dot com.
Reach out and talk to Steve if you think you
might need some help. And thank you so much. Appreciate
the time, and it's been good to have you Kevin.
Speaker 4 (50:00):
It's been an absolute pleasure. I appreciate you and what
you do.
Speaker 3 (50:03):
Thank you very much, and thanks everybody for listening and watching.
We appreciate you. This is the show about business and
often business challenges. If you've got concerns about the sales
effectiveness of your company, whether your sales team is you
or very small, or it's very large, feel free to
reach out to me on Facebook or LinkedIn at Winning
Business Radio. Drop me a note at one of my
(50:23):
many email addresses, Kevin at Winning Business Radio dot com.
Our company is Winning and Corporated. We're part of Sandler Training.
We develop salespeople and sales teams into high achievers and
sales leaders into true coaches and mentors. Listen, We're not
for everybody, but maybe we should have a conversation. Thank
you to producer and engineer one. Thank you one for
(50:44):
another job well done. Be sure to join us next Monday,
March twenty third. My returning guest will be best selling
author and salary coach founder John Gates to introduce the Crossroads,
a proven faith aligned path to help Christian corporate leaders
launch their first consulting business. Until then, this is Kevin Hallena.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
You have been listening to Winning Business Radio with your host,
Kevin Helena. If you missed any part of this episode,
The podcast is available on Talk for Podcasting and iHeartRadio.
For more information and questions, go to Winning Business Radio
dot com or check us out on social media. Tune
in again next week and every Monday at four pm
Eastern Time to listen live to Winning Business Radio on
(51:27):
W four CY Radio W four cy dot com. Until then,
let's succeed where others have failed and win in business
with Kevin Halenan and Winning Business Radio
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