I’m passionate about people development. I think business and the growth of business is accomplished through people. It is shortsighted to believe that we can develop and grow without the interaction and development of people. My greatest accomplishments are when I see someone that I’ve worked with achieve their goal. Witnessing their growth, promotion or accomplishing things in their life -- that’s the enrichment portion of it, and where I derive the greatest thrill. I’ve been blessed and have accomplished many things in my life but other people have helped me develop my talent. It is fulfilling to pay it forward, and help others develop as well.
When I was young, my mother worked a lot of hours and so did my older brothers. If it wasn't for a coach who was a family friend, I wouldn't have gotten involved in football. He was willing to pick me up, take me to practice, and look after me. When I was young, my coaches would fill the gaps that my family couldn’t. Then this became a pattern, because in the business world, I had amazing managers, coach, leaders, and mentors. I noticed that the great managers were different, they were like coaches. They weren't just the manager that could help you “with your job”. These leaders helped enrich my life and helped me become a better man. I've been blessed to have great mentors and leaders in my life.
Teamwork Makes the Dream Work
I’ve been involved in sports my entire life – first as a player, then as a coach and leader.
Sales and sports are very similar. You work very hard and practice very hard for those opportunities to be able to use your skill to accomplish your end goal.
Provided by Fleetwatcher
When I came to FleetWatcher, I realized that sports and contracting, specifically heavy civil contracting, were also very similar. Each person on the team has a vital part in the success of the endeavor. It's the team aspect that sports really drives home for me when in contracting. It starts with leadership. Team leaders must make sure everybody's in the right place, they have to make sure everybody's aligned with the mission, and then hold everyone accountable in that to get things done.
Also, being in sports, the competitive nature of business has always been a positive thing for me, and I see the grit in companies getting work done on timelines. I see the cooperation with government entities like DOTs and being able to perform at a high level under strict regulations. Games have rules that you have to abide by and things of that nature. When you talk about sports and you talk about my field, which is sales and sales leadership, and then you couple that with this construction space, this isn't an individual contractor painting the side of a building. These are teams. These are hundreds of men and women. That is really the thread pullings everything together for me.
My Worlds Colliding
I've always been in business leadership. We’re a construction technology company, helping companies work more efficiently by providing complete transparency so that all of the assets in their fleet can be productively employed. I’ve worked for Verizon and Hewlett Package on their mobile services, so I understand the mobile aspect of the business. And I worked on the marketing and advertising with contractors, so I understood their concerns. But it was people and process development that brought me into FleetWatcher.
I've been in the cell phone business, then I sold marketing to contractors. How I got my name out there has been in people development. I've either managed teams or managed leaders. They call me the coach because I enjoy coaching teams, growing teams, coaching culture, and developing folks to be the best that they could be. How I got into FleetWatcher is through those avenues.
Larry Baker, the owner of FleetWatcher, was mentor of mine. We have a lot in common – we’re both alumni from Ball State University, and sales leaders in the city of Indianapolis. He and I always were on the same page about growing people, growing industries, and helping folks achieve to the highest level that they can achieve. Now my involvement with FleetWatcher made a ton of sense because I was already working with general contractors: Roofing, painting, and smaller electrical contractors. I understood the problems, the people, and I understood the language.
Even though I understood the mobile technology aspect and the value proposition that we bring to contractors, it wasn’t always smooth sailing. What I didn't know about this space, but that I realized very early, is that the construction space was underserved by the technology world. There are a lot of fields that had adopted technology at a higher rate, at a faster speed, and construction still hung on to some of the old school ways. It wasn’t in a negative way. The success formula that contractors used to get to reach the top and be there for a hundred years, had just not quite changed much to meet the times and the demand.
Timing is everything
When I joined FleetWatcher, we were right at the cusp of a breakthrough, which was going to change the way contractors are going to be doing business. It was just good timing.
While timing was important, so was the leadership component - giving people the tools that they need to get the job done but also holding them accountable FleetWatcher technology brings order to the chaos. I felt like not only were we filling the gap in serving the construction space with technology, but we're also bridging the gap to allow leaders to be able to lead and hold their teams accountable at a high level. I’ve had the privilege to work with some of the greatest leaders in the construction world (with FleetWatcher), and with these tools I think they can take their game to the next level.
There were three things that lead to the adoption of FleetWatcher. First, it was designed to solve problems and how we solve the problems was designed by contractors. We worked closely with contractors and relied heavily on their feedback. It was through their lens how we built it, so it was not foreign to them.
Number two was integration. There was always an issue in construction where you had all this software, none of it talked. None of the information flowed. We began to develop software partnerships very early. Now you've got a system that was created by the contractor that's allowing their other systems to talk.
Then the third piece is money. The reason why we were able to sustain our product is because we help companies save money and money talks. Once these contractors went out and evangelized about the thousands and millions of dollars that they saved, then it was worth the investment, whether you had to invest in people or you had to invest in the software or the technology. When companies were able to save money, it then allowed them to free up the budget to spend more time dealing with construction software, which they didn't see the value in before. It’s hard to credit the technology movement to the FleetWatcher software alone. It was the timing. Contractors really dialed in and gave us the time to let it develop its value alongside of their organization.
Provided by Fleetwatcher
Most people probably think that sales people really love the reward. The reward is my least favorite because that's where all the stress is. My most favorite thing about sales and about what I do is the relationships. I'm a people person. Sales is a relationship and a people business. Anybody that does business with FleetWatcher, they're going to do business with me and my team, because they trust us, and believe that we can help them accomplish their goal. That’s a real relationship. Even if somebody doesn't spend money with me, I always have a good time with them, and I always get a benefit out of them regardless of what the end result is. I think it's a people business. I'm just natural for sales because I like people and people like me, and that's just how it came about. I lead people for a living, I help people for a living, and I like to have fun doing it, and I think that shows.
