The Heart of Business
"The Heart of Business" podcast, hosted by Mo Fathelbab, is an authentic and insightful exploration of the human side of leadership and professional growth. Through candid conversations with accomplished business leaders, thought leaders, and peer group facilitators, Mo will delve deep into the personal journeys, challenges, and triumphs that have shaped their careers. Mo Fathelbab's skillful and empathetic approach creates a safe space for guests to share their truths and vulnerabilities, revealing the emotional and often unseen dimensions of success in the corporate world. Each episode offers listeners a chance to glean practical wisdom, heartfelt advice, and a profound understanding of the intricate interplay between leadership, authenticity, and personal growth.
The "Heart of Business" is the official podcast of International Facilitators Organization, LLC and hosted by IFO's founder and CEO, Mo Fathelbab. To learn more, please visit www.internationalfacilitatorsorganization.com.
The Heart of Business
Reimagining Business Success: Lessons from David Duerr
Meet David Duerr, a true testament to the entrepreneurial spirit, who joins us to unravel his story of grit and ambition. From his early days in Buffalo, New York, to pioneering his own company in the contract furnishings industry, David's journey is filled with lessons on the audacity it takes to rise through the ranks and ultimately sell a successful business to a major player like Boise Cascade Office Products. Join us as David shares the raw challenges and sweet victories of his path, offering a rare glimpse into the differences between being a business owner versus an employee.
Curious about what keeps an entrepreneur going when the going gets tough? You're not alone. David enlightens us on the unyielding drive needed to push through adversity as we explore the pressure of selling ideas and visions to stakeholders and the ever-present fear of failure that actually fuels success. Dive into the exhilarating world of managing at-risk capital and the intricate satisfaction of delivering investor returns. Even after selling his company, David found himself at a crossroads, seeking new purpose and leading to the inception of Focus Equity Partners—a venture that merges operational private equity with cutting-edge digital marketing strategies.
David sheds light on the transformative impact of joining the Entrepreneurs Organization during a pivotal career moment, and we draw fascinating parallels between business acumen and the game of golf as a tool for building invaluable relationships. Cap off the episode with inspiring motivational themes shared by David Duerr, encouraging both personal and professional growth. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review; your feedback helps other listeners discover the wealth of wisdom in the Heart of Business podcast.
Please visit www.internationalfacilitatorsorganization.com to learn more about Mo Fathelbab and International Facilitators Organization (IFO), a leading provider of facilitators and related group facilitation services, providing training, certification, marketing services, education, and community for peer group facilitators at all stages of their career.
Welcome to the Heart of Business podcast sponsored by International Facilitators Organization. I'm your host, mo Fatalbab, and today our guest is David Dewar. He's an entrepreneur that I met back in 1998 at the Entrepreneurs Organization in Chicago and he had started one business and since then he has started and sold eight businesses and has become a venture capitalist along the way. And David, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:It's good to see you again, mo.
Speaker 1:It's been a long time. It has been a very long time. So, david, I want to start with your first entrepreneurial spark. What was the very first thing you did? I'm sure you did something when you were, you know, a teenager or something like that. What was the very first spark?
Speaker 2:You know, I had a little snow shoveling business. I was born and raised in Buffalo, new York, and every time that it would snow out we would, you know, have the day off, assuming the snow was large enough, and me and my buddy from next door would grab our shovels and off we went. And so we had, you know, the houses that we knew would always hire us, and you just had to get out early, you know, because they needed to obviously get out of their driveways. And so probably my first little business was as a young teenager, and maybe I wasn't even a teenager, but we'd go out and shovel all day long.
Speaker 1:You know this puts a smile on my face because I'll tell you, even at this age of mine which I don't have to mention on air, so to speak, is even at this age of mine, when it snows here in DC, I love not only to shovel our little driveway but our neighbors and our other neighbors. I just love it. It's so fun and crazy story. Our one neighbor is from Buffalo and has become one of our best friends. He's got the you know, the whole pandemic. He saved our community because he was the gathering spot. So Buffalo just keeps coming up in my life. I've known you for God knows 25 years and did not know you're from Buffalo.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I grew up in a in a small little lumber and steel town called North Tonawanda, right on the Erie Barge Canal, kind of right in between Buffalo and Niagara Falls.
Speaker 1:Okay, lovely, so your first real business after that. What happened next?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a company. It was in the contract furnishings industry. It was a company called Workspace, and coming out of college I couldn't find a job and the one job that I found was for a contract furniture distributor company called Business Interiors that was located just near O'Hare Airport. And so I became a salesman in that business. And you know, once you kind of get into an industry and you learn that industry and you learn the players and the products and the services and all that kind of stuff, you're kind of stuck in there, you know, for for a bit and I ended up, uh, becoming a salesman.
Speaker 2:Uh worked my way up, uh, from a salesman into management and was there about seven years. I was their VP of sales and marketing, I think it was in 1995. And uh, I just had an itch to to do my own thing. And uh, I had a couple of good friends of mine who, uh, uh were very successful entrepreneurs that had made some money, who were interested in in in uh, uh, you know, helping me, you know, see out my dream. And uh, uh, so I left the company that I was with and basically started a competitor doing the exact same thing, but I was a one man band and they, you know, were, uh, I think at the time about a hundred million dollar company.
Speaker 2:And so, um, we had to figure out how to be different. And uh, hired a few people, went out, knocked on doors, found a couple of customers. Hired a few more people, found a few more customers. And we just, you know, piece the thing together and every single day, you know, it's like I don't think this is going to work. We got to shut it down. And then the next day it was like, how do you hire enough people? Um, I, I, I ran out of money several times. I was on the verge of shutting it down several times. Uh, and then, you know, you kind of get past that inflection point where things look really, really, really good.
Speaker 2:And uh, then, uh, uh, just built a really nice business. It was a nice medium-sized business. I think we got up to boy $25 million maybe in revenue. It began to do an expansion into other marketplaces Indianapolis, we were looking at Columbus, kansas City and at that time Boise Cascade Office Products was a big player in. They were trying to get more into commercial furniture and they were very interested in an acquisition of my company. I stayed with them for about 18 months. We did a whole bunch of acquisitions, which was an awesome experience for me and I think my understanding is today that little company that I founded back in 1995 is over a billion dollars in revenue and they've done an awesome job with it. It was a great experience for me packaging up the business, selling the business, selling it or running it as an employee versus an owner. It was a great experience.
Speaker 1:So when did you decide you cannot be an employee anymore?
Speaker 2:You know, I just I was in my late 20s. I had some mentors that were successful, very successful as business founders and business leaders, and I just felt that I wasn't going to be able to achieve the goals that I wanted in my life being an employee. I just felt that I needed to be the guy you know kind of, you know steering the ship, you know for good or for bad. I just felt that I had the ability to do that. And and and uh, I just got that itch. Um, and the timing was right. Uh, uh, at at that moment in time, um and uh, I didn't have kids. Um, and if I was going to take risk, now was the time to do it.
Speaker 2:And I had a couple of really good mentors, the, the got behind me in that business. I call them investors, but they were more partners than they were investors. They weren't write a check and call me next year let me know how we did. They were very active and they taught me so much just about culture and customers and employees and all the different things that you need to do to differentiate your business and to build value. And they were terrific friends, terrific business partners and mentors, and I wanted to be like them and I was very fortunate that you know that was able to come back. It was able to come together at that moment in time in 1995.
Speaker 1:And what kept you going during some of those difficult times? I mean, you know you said it was up and down and one day we're going to shut down, one day we need to hire a bunch of people. What kept you?
Speaker 2:going. Well, I'll tell you. I talked a second ago about, you know, being an employee. When you're an employee, stuff gets bad. Your boss is all over you. You don't like your job, you always quit. You always have that ability to walk away. When you're an owner, you can't. You don't have the choice. No matter how bad the day is, no matter how bad sales are, no matter you know what the pressures are you can't quit. And so what keeps you going is you don't have a choice.
Speaker 1:You just don't have a choice.
Speaker 2:You know you can fail and people certainly do fail, but most people don't give up without a fight and in sometimes, you know I can think of. You know lots of different examples. You know, when it was dark and you just got to muscle your way through it and you got to be creative and you got to think your way out of the problem and you got to work the phones and you got to. You got to be a salesman. You got to. You got to do all the things you got to do and sometimes you're selling partners, sometimes you're selling bankers, sometimes you're selling customers, sometimes you're selling employees. It's, but you just can't ever quit. You know, as an employee, you have, you have the ability, you know what. I just don't like it anymore so you walk away. You can't do that as an owner.
Speaker 1:You know, when you say you can't quit. That is absolutely what's been drummed into me from just running marathons and triathlons.
Speaker 2:That's the mentality you don't lose unless you quit. Basically, yeah, for me, quitting wasn't an option, because if I quit, people lost money. People lost their jobs, customers stopped being served, and so one of the things I'm most proud about in my career is I've raised a lot of at-risk capital to build businesses and I've never had to sit across the table from someone and say, hey, I lost all your money and I've never had to do that. Now, some of the checks that I've been able to give back to people are bigger than others. There's some successes which I'm more to people are bigger than others. There's some successes which I'm more proud of the result than others, but they've all been successful, that's an incredible achievement.
Speaker 1:David, listen, I know a lot of people that do this kind of work that you do and a lot of entrepreneurs, and every one of them has been a success as an incredible achievement.
Speaker 2:But I will tell you, for me personally, a motivator, a huge motivator, is the fear of sitting across from somebody saying you believed in me and I failed you. Oh, and, by the way, I lost all your money, and people understand that.
Speaker 2:You know, sophisticated investors understand the risks going into a deal, but they don't invest in you because they think that you're going to lose their money. They invest in you because they believe in the idea, they believe in you, they believe in the vision and they're willing to write a check. And I don't care how rich you are. Rich people don't like losing money. No, they don't, because not only is the financial loss which might not be life-changing, but it's the. I made a bad decision, yeah, and so I've been very fortunate in my career that all the at-risk capital that I have raised, both on the equity sides and on the debt sides, everybody's always been paid and everybody's always made a return, and that's you know. So when I look back on the successes that I have had, I'm most proud of that because I, knock on wood, have never had to, you know to do that yet in my career, and I'm very fortunate and blessed that I can say that.
Speaker 1:And loving the story. Amazing and inspiring and so cool. So you sell the business.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And do you go on vacation for five years? Do you go right to work? What happens next?
Speaker 2:I'll tell you it was one of the worst times of my life. I had sold the business, made some money, didn't need to worry about getting paid the next week not enough money that I could live the rest of my life with the lifestyle I wanted to live. But it was a nice hit. It was a nice win. It was very rewarding for me and gave me a lot of security and confidence moving forward, that I can now do other things and make decisions. So my last day was December 31st of 2001. And so I decided I'm going to take some time off and just relax. Now we're in the middle of the winter in Chicago, so there's not a lot to do. We just had a baby. So the baby was was relatively young and um uh, I decided I'm just gonna take some time off and I will tell you, mo, that I think my time off was probably all about two or three weeks and I was miserable I was absolutely miserable and, um, I think a lot of it had to do with I.
Speaker 2:I just had no purpose, nobody, my phone wasn't ringing. I was yesterday's mashed potatoes. You know nobody cared. You know the employees didn't call you because you can't do anything for them. Customers didn't call you because you didn't do anything for them. So you used to always be that big line outside your office and at the end of the day you're exhausted because you're. You know people are coming to you because you can help them fix their problem and now all of a sudden nobody needs you, nobody's emailing you. You look at your email and you got all excited when it was like a spam. But the phone's not ringing. You know everybody moved on, so it got lonely. It got lonely, I had no purpose and so I really struggled and my intention was probably to take six months or a year off and just kind of figure it out. And it didn't work. It didn't work out so well.
Speaker 1:And so, just just for reference point, at that point you're a golfer, you love golf.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it isn't like you got nothing to do, no, Well, but I'm in January, in January of Chicago, so there was no golf and there was none, and so I really struggled with it and so I ended up, you know, with putting a small investment firm together to just basically put up a shingle. I called it Focus Equity Partners and it was intended to be kind of like operational private equity, and at the time there was a concept that I came up with which was basically templated digital marketing for the medical space, and I launched a company with a good buddy of mine as my partner the two of us together who I met back in the EO, the YEO stage. He was a YEO member as well and we put this business together called OfficeSite, and provided templated marketing to physicians so they could buy a website, get SEO, paid search within 24 hours, and we layered on thousands of customers, and so I did that business. I did a business in the specialty pharmacy space called CNM Pharmacy, which we provided HIV and our therapies to HIV and AIDS patients. It was a relatively it was. We basically had, you know, the city of Chicago and in all the suburbs that we served that population. It was an awesome business that we built and we ended up selling it to Walgreens, their health specialty division, and then I got, you know, did a business in the wireless broadband space.
Speaker 2:Both license it was radios and unlicensed space that we built, ended up being these big networks and licensed space and ended up selling it. Built a big network in Chicago, new York, milwaukee, and we ended up selling that business to Windstream. And then this office site business got really big and exciting and fun and sold that business to a group backed by KKR, and so we've had some really nice exits. But these were small ideas that turned into small companies that we grew into medium-sized companies and ended up selling them into large companies and so that's just. That was a lot of fun, it was very rewarding and so I'm still at it.
Speaker 2:I got a company in the digital marketing space right now called Straight North, a large digital marketing firm, and then we incubated a fun company in the hockey space called Pro Stock Hockey. We buy all the NHL gear. We buy all the excess gear from the manufacturers, resell it to amateur hockey players. It's an online e-com business called ProStockHockeycom. And then we've got an affiliate marketing company called GearGeekcom, which is in the hockey space as well. So we're still incubating some stuff and I'm not done yet. I think we've got a few more things up our sleeves.
Speaker 1:I have no doubt you're not done yet. And when you think about your future, david, and we think about a few more things up your sleeves, to me it seems like you're business agnostic, like the type of business itself seems to be not as important to you as the love of the business process itself. Would you say that's true?
Speaker 2:Yeah, for me the most important thing is just kind of finding an inefficiency in a marketplace and figuring out how to package it up and make it different. I've always had the philosophy, as most business leaders do, is, if you can't be different, stay home. I don't like commodity businesses. I don't like being in a commodity. There's certain aspects of the business I'd like a technology component to it. I like a marketing and a brand component to it. I like kind of that mission critical thing. So like if you look at our straight north business, we're in the lead gen business. We drive leads, you know, to our customers. They don't get leads, their businesses don't grow. It's mission critical. They have a bad lead day, they yell at us. They have a great lead day, they hug us, you know. So I like these businesses that can be different, that can be fun, that can be branded, can be interesting, and those tend to have a technology and marketing component to it. And so that's kind of been the ingredient.
Speaker 2:I like service businesses a lot, you know, I like, I like businesses. I I prefer b2b but like our, our hockey business is b2c. I like sitting across the table from ceos. I like businesses spending money. With businesses. It's easier to get money out of somebody's pocket when it's a business versus as a consumer. Um, I, I, I like building things that can scale, can get big, can get interesting. Um, that those are, you know I, but, yes, in my industry, agnostic, very much so. But I think my specialty is certainly on the mart, you know, the the finance and marketing side. And so if, if you know, I don't think I'd be good in metal bending unless I can figure out how to make metal bending fun and interesting and cool.
Speaker 1:But you have a criteria. It sounds like you have a very strict discipline criteria for how you choose what you're going to go into.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very much so.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I want to go back to the early days and you were in EO. We met when you were a member of EO. It was called YEO, the Young Entrepreneurs Organization, and then became just the Entrepreneurs Organization, and I'm just reflecting on all the time we had in those incredible retreats and being in that forum group and just what takeaways do you have reflecting back on that and how it impacted you and your business, and maybe even personally on that and how it impacted you and your business and maybe even personally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think. If you go back in time to when I joined YEO, it was in the mid-90s I was a truly a young entrepreneur and I was struggling. I was struggling to find customers to sell things, to hire people, to generate I mean all the things that most small young business entrepreneurs have. I was no different. You know, I didn't hang my shingle and success went straight to the moon. You know, there was more times than not, probably, that I thought about shutting down the business than expanding and growing it, and so I was struggling, and I can't recall for the life of me how I got introduced to the YEO, but I got introduced through somebody who says you got to join this organization because it's people that that are in a similar place than you are, and, um, so I went to a couple of little you know things or whatever, and ended up joining, became a part of a forum group which, um, I I think was was critical to the foundation for my success, because there were people in the forum at the time.
Speaker 2:We were all in different places, but for the most part we were bootstrapping guys who had just not figured it out and we were learning from each other's experiences. And then, as time went on, we had a forum member, you know, that sold his company and made a ton of money and that was tremendous motivation and aspiration, you know, for all of us, because you're like, oh my God, one of our own, you know rung the bell. This was huge. And then another one did, and then we had a couple that went out of business and so you lived, you know it was, you were seeing, you know, both ends of the spectrum of what could happen to you.
Speaker 2:But it was so important to the, I think, my development as a leader, as a decision maker, to be able to have conversations with people that were in a similar place than I was, at a similar time. I would say plus or minus. We were probably all within five, six years in age. Certainly all our businesses were similar, you know. They were, all you know, probably a million to $20 million in revenue. So nobody was, you know, a publicly traded company and all of us had raised a little bit of money or bootstrapped it and it was critical, I think, for the foundation of my successes.
Speaker 1:Well, that is wonderful to hear and music to my ears, given all your successes. So you're a big golfer and I've just taken up the sport and I'm really really falling in love with it and I see your smile. I'm wondering what golf means to you in terms of business, whether it has to do with sales or whether it has to do with just analogies that compare the two, whether it has to do with just analogies that compare the two.
Speaker 2:Oh boy, I would say, when it comes to the game of golf and you apply it to business, probably the best thing that golf does is you have a captive audience for four hours. You have relationship building, you have storytelling. You have you see a lot and learn a lot about somebody when they're golfing. You see about their temper, you have, you, you, you see a lot and learn a lot about somebody when they're golfing. You see about their temper, you see about their their, uh, just, you know how they react to whatever the game delivers for you. Uh, on that point in time.
Speaker 2:But I've always been a firm believer and I tell my sales folks, is, you know, in all the businesses, is if you can capture somebody at a Cubs game, a hockey game, a golf course, and you can build relationships, you know that where you're not selling them something, they get to know you, you get to know them that it's invaluable. You can't buy that you know. And in this day of Zoom, where everybody's, you know, given 30 days Zoom time, you can't develop a relationship over Zoom, do that over a meal, over a bottle of wine on the golf course. And so, for me, I think I have closed more deals and raised more money and sold all on the golf course. You know, and not because that happens there, but you build the relationship and then you know you belong to a club and you get to meet people and you don't run around and tell people what you know, you, you, you belong to a club and you get to meet people and you don't run around and tell people what.
Speaker 2:But over time you develop relationships and people want to do. You know. You know the same people want to do business with people. They know like and trust, and so, um, I, I think golf is is has helped facilitate, you know, a lot of success. Um, but I've never gone into a golf match thinking, you know what, this is my next customer, or this person is going to invest, or this person is going to come work for me. It's just you, just let it breathe, you know, and the worst thing that happens to you is you spend four hours getting to know some people a little bit better and you have some fun. It's a beautiful sunny day and that's the worst thing that happens to you. But golf and business are terrific. I think they go together so well, as long as you don't have the expectation that you're inviting somebody to play golf because you want something from them.
Speaker 1:Good, good, good sage wisdom from you, sir. Thank you, David. What would you say to someone who is just starting a business about what they need to know in two sentences that really might motivate them?
Speaker 2:Boy. What should I say? Well, first I would say it's the most rewarding thing in the world. There is nothing more rewarding than coming up with an idea, building it and watching it succeed, or watching it fail before it succeeds, and then fails again and then succeeds. It's that constant challenge of creativity and figuring out how to be different, how to convince somebody to buy what is you're selling.
Speaker 2:There's nothing more rewarding than when somebody says yes, I like you, I like your product, I like your service. I think you're the right one. I'm going to hand you money to do what I need. You know. I think that's the most. You know. It's a vote. You know people vote with their pocketbook. If they like you and they believe that you're going to fix their problem, they pay you, and if they don't, they don't.
Speaker 1:Simply said, simply said so well. David Doerr, such a pleasure having you with us on the show today. It was really an incredibly motivating conversation that I can't wait to hear again. You can follow the Heart of Business podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Also, podcast reviews have a real impact on a podcast visibility, so if you enjoyed today's episode, please like it and give us a review. Finally, you could find all our episodes at internationalfacilitatorsorganizationcom. Thank you.
