I am a Sales and Marketing Consultant at TechCXO helping technology companies accelerate their growth.

In January of 2010, my wife Justeen and I set out on a journey to change our lives. After 15 years of living in the heart of Atlanta, we sold everything and moved to the country. It was the best thing we ever did. And, we absolutely love it here. Every day, I learn new things about living in the country and can’t help but see the incredible lessons that the country teaches about success in business.

This is my personal blog. It is focused on “country-inspired strategy.” My mission is not only to help you to grow your company and be an incredibly effective leader, but I also want to help you achieve the same joy that Justeen and I live everyday as a result of our journey to the country. While your utopia might not include livestock and tractors, I’ll help you visualize your path and get you started on your journey.

So, why suits2boots? Simple. When thinking about a name for the blog, something hit me that really typifies our transformation to country-dwellers. For 12 years, I donned a suit and tie everyday and drove to a high-rise in Atlanta. Nowadays, and when I’m not at client site, Justeen and I share and work from the studio on our property. It just makes sense to slide on a pair of Wranglers and a pair of boots. I guess it’s the new uniform to fit a wonderful new life.

I generally write on Sales and Marketing Strategy, Leadership, Growing Companies, and Love. On occasion, I write about stuff that doesn’t fit neatly into one of these categories.

My goal is to create insightful, relevant content that you can put to work in your professional and personal life.

I typically post about once per week. To make sure you don’t miss my newest posts, you can subscribe via email

My Biography

I grew up in a small, rural town of 8,000 people in Cambridge, Ohio. It’s a wonderful place full of great people. Aside from the town itself, everything that I love about living in the country today, I wanted nothing to do with growing up. Tractors, bird dogs, compost piles, gardening, and four-wheelers were the last things on my mind back then. Now, they are front and center of my free time. All my current interests that would’ve been basically free back then are a LOT more expensive now! Who would’ve bet 10 years ago that Tractor Supply would now be my favorite place to shop? Perhaps our new place in the country reminds me of Cambridge, and that’s why it feels like home.

I have a deep, technical background with Electrical Engineering degrees from both Purdue University (1992) and the University of Michigan (1994). What can I say? I love technology. I absolutely love it. I had a fantastic start to my career working as an Advanced Development R&D engineer for General Motors doing some of the preliminary development work on products you use today like OnStar, XM Satellite Radio, and Navigation. After GM, I spent several years working as a systems and sales engineer in the wireless mobile data world. Then, I had the incredible good fortune to complete my MBA from Yale University in 2000 with concentrations in Strategy, Leadership, and Marketing.

Coming out of the MBA experience, I knew I wanted to stay close to my first passion, technology, and continue to leverage and grow my strong technical foundation. So I sought out, and  have been fortunate to meet, outstanding success in various sales, marketing, and leadership roles at technology companies such as Nortel Networks, Cisco Systems, and Mitel. You can read my professional bio here at LinkedIn. Over the past 15 years, I am grateful to have worked with some extremely talented sales and marketing teams and leaders. Over that time, I have developed deep expertise and a second passion for growing companies.

I am currently a Partner at a consulting firm, TechCXO (follow TechCXO on Twitter) in our Sales, Marketing, and Leadership practice. TechCXO is a different kind of consulting firm. All of the partners have been former CFOs, CEOs, CMOs, COOs, and heads of sales (CSO). There are no associate consultants, per se. We are not only the engagement lead; our clients get the direct benefit of us doing our own work. The model creates very efficient and valuable engagements. We’ve all been in functional roles for most of our careers. So, our practical experience combined with our frameworks are extremely useful to clients who wish to accelerate their business.

I am a dedicated practitioner of leadership, helping organizations to achieve their growth aspirations in the technology industry. As a sales methodology and business development expert, I help companies and sales teams be more relevant to customers, achieve much greater predictability in sales and revenue, grow pipeline and accelerate revenue. I would love to talk with you about pushing your sales to the next level, establishing better revenue governance, achieve great predicability in sales forecasting, and growing your company. Click here to inquire.

Personal

I have been married to Justeen for 16 years. We met at Purdue and moved to Atlanta after graduate school. We now live 30 minutes south of Atlanta… IN THE COUNTRY. Justeen is delightful and makes me incredibly happy. She is also an amazing architect (Oess Architects) and one of the most gifted people I know. Be on the lookout for upcoming guest posts from Justeen about entertaining, design, gardening, canning, life, and her love for the country life.

We are quite content as a result of our move to the country. We’ve started renovating an 1890′s farmhouse and are slowly turning the property into a hobby farm. We’ve made some incredible friends who all live within a couple of miles of Serenbe. If you are not familiar with Serenbe, you should click the preceding link and check it out. It is a special place. The sense of community we feel here reminds me of home.

Finally, we have three dogs, Vino, Guffi, and Josie. They were, in fact, the original reason for our decision to move out of Atlanta. It seemed that every weekend, we would leave on Friday and return on Sunday to attend a hunt test or field trial competition, train for a competition, or just let the dogs stretch their legs. Eventually, Justeen said, “Why are we doing this? Let’s stop driving to the country every weekend and just MOVE to the country.” So, we did.

By the way, the picture to the right was a little joke Justeen played on my mother. Nearing Christmas time last year, Mom was receiving school pictures and Christmas card photos of her grandchildren. She called us one day and said, “I don’t have any pictures of you, Justeen, and the dogs. Get one taken, please.” I’m sure what she had in mind was a portrait of Justeen and me in matching blue Christmas Sweaters and the dogs each with a red bow tied around their necks. So, what did we do? We had a friend take this picture while out hunting with the dogs one day, put the photo in a sterling silver frame, wrapped it, and put it under the tree! Priceless fun.

When I’m not working with my clients, I love running, cycling, cooking, entertaining friends, and most of all…working on our property.

My Contact Information

You can contact me via email or follow me on Twitter or Facebook.

Colophon

Suits2boots.net would not be possible without the help, coaching, and guidance from Bill Getch, my PR guy and principal owner of Professional Services PR. You can connect with Bill on LinkedIn, or follow him on Twitter.

My blog is built on WordPress 3.5 (self-hosted). I use StandardTheme, a premium WordPress theme. It is a great theme for bloggers, and easy for anyone who wants to start writing to get started.

For blog hosting, I recommend BlueHost. It is easy-to-use, reliable, and inexpensive. It also has superb, 24-7 support. It is the only hosting service I personally recommend.