About the Guest:
Ron Alvesteffer is the President and CEO of Service Express, which sells service contracts to finish server, storage and networking gear in large, corporate data centers. Since 2001, the company has averaged double-digit growth that Ron attributes to the unique corporate culture called The Service Express Way. Ron’s passion for ongoing education and building better leaders extends past his work day as he speaks to companies and organizations about leadership development and building winning workplace cultures. He has served as both the Chapter Chair and the Education Chair for the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), and he’s also on the board of the Spectrum Health Foundation.
Quotes:
07:05 - “You can get a degree in sales. There was none of that when I was starting in the 90s. Business was either marketing or accounting and finance. It wasn’t sales, right?” – Ron Alvesteffer
11:32 - “Standardized everything, brought in training and taught the team and things just took off from there.” – Ron Alvesteffer
11:54 - “No one has an instinct for hiring.” – Ron Alvesteffer
13:34 - “I think you should name me president and just be an investor; let me run the company.” – Ron Alvesteffer
18:37 - “What’s the goal and does everybody have a shared goal?” – Ron Alvesteffer
21:05 - “The longer we talked, the terms got worse.” – Ron Alvesteffer
28:45 - “The right private equity investor will buy into what your vision and strategy.” – Ron Alvesteffer
33:30 - “There’s a difference between people who spend time wanting to know the people and the culture and thinking about how not to disrupt that going forward, backed up by reference calls and checks to their firms to make sure they’ve demonstrated that they have done that.” – Ron Alvesteffer
41:45 - “If we’re going to accelerate investment here in years one and two, when does that investment pay out? What’s the projection for that and then measure against the projection so you know if you’re working or not.” – Ron Alvesteffer
Links and Resources:
You can also reach out to me via email at
rtansom@arkona.io, or on my
LinkedIn.