I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, spending my days in the woods and maintaining 45 acres of property. My father was an entrepreneur that made his living as a general contractor, helping high-end customers remodel their homes. Growing up working with my dad, I was often annoyed by his perfectionist approach, especially when it meant that a job that could have been quick and easy took many hours or days. What I learned from him was that taking ownership of what other people hold dear earns trust and repeat business. After graduating high school, I enrolled in a mechanical engineering program, and decided after two and a half years, it just wasn’t my passion, so I pursued a lifelong dream by joining the Marine Corps as an infantryman. The “needs of the Marine Corps” set me on a unique path that included: A stint at a specialized unit that was designed to respond to a Nuclear/Chemical/Biological attack on the capital. I learned search and rescue, earned an EMT certification, spent hundreds of hours in chemical resistant bag suits, earned my wings at Army Airborne School, and learned medical procedures like intubation, sutures, traumatic injury treatment, and chemical weapons first aid. After my time at this unit, I was transferred to Camp Pendleton, was trained in Arabic language, culture, negotiation, and training indigenous fighters, and deployed to Iraq as part of a 15 man Military Transition Team. We attached to an Iraqi Army Battalion, and trained, and performed operations with them. I had an in depth look at the U.S. attempts at rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure, and at the complexities of leadership in the midst of divergent motivations. My experiences in the USMC solidified a developing mindset that is best summarized by a quote my subordinates were used to hearing: “I don’t want excuses, I want results.” Throughout my years of leading members of my business team, that “results first” philosophy has stood, and is applied daily in all areas of business. It’s amazing how much can get done when everyone on a team is aware that excuses aren’t accepted, only solutions. After the USMC, I earned my MBA in San Diego, started a number of businesses, and then moved back to PA, where I founded a marketing agency and ran it for 9 years. My passion has developed into focusing on a limited number of companies and applying all of my years of knowledge as a high level marketing consultant.
Over the years I’ve worked with companies of all types, some of whom hired a 3rd party consultant to create a growth strategy. As the founder of a successful marketing firm, I’ve always found these situations to be the most difficult in which to produce results. This is because the consultant had little knowledge of the marketing arena, or what techniques would produce results, leading to a bad case of analysis paralysis. These consultants often spend months or years discussing business plans and generating ideas with little concept of how to deliver on those ideas. As the marketing expert, I was stuck trying to make the best out of second-hand directives instead of doing what I do best: generate profits. What I’ve learned from working with consultants is that these “trusted advisors” tend to sell the sawdust instead of the furniture. If you are investing business growth, I take personal ownership of that investment and make sure it produces a return. I don’t particularly care to fix your IT problems, your culture problems, or your product problems, but if in the course of creating a high impact marketing plan, we identify issues that are going to cause catastrophic failure, we will make sure those items get fixed first. If you are ready to breathe that sigh of relief, knowing a competent professional is taking ownership of your marketing, let's have a conversation.
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