You had worked in the landscaping and snow removal industries prior to joining Diaz Group. What did you bring to this company that they didn’t already have?
I came here with three decades of experience working with privately-held companies, all of which were in growth mode. In other words, they were all smaller businesses working to become larger ones. I had spent twenty of those years in the snow removal and/or green service industries, nearly all of which involved either franchising or brokered services. Yes, the Diaz Group family and I had been in the same industries but not in the same capacity, which made me a unique find for them at the time.
If you had to name one and only one thing that you appreciate most about being at Diaz Group, what would it be?
That’s easy. For me, it’s the company culture. Or rather, our leadership’s fierce loyalty to that culture. Many companies talk about having a family-like, people-centric work culture and maybe some have it, maybe they don’t. Here, we live it every single day. Watch what happens when someone here needs help or when one of our own suffers a personal loss. Better yet, watch what happens if anybody tries to undermine our organizational culture. I was raised in a tenacious family environment myself, so the culture and core values of Diaz Group resonate with my own in a big way.
You are known to be an avid motorcyclist and moto-tourist. Have you ridden to many interesting destinations?
Many? Oh, heavens no, not nearly enough, in my opinion. I’ve toured the Black Hills of South Dakota and I’ve ridden as far west as Portland, Oregon by bike. Both of those trips were pretty interesting. During the Portland run, I purposely detoured my group across Utah to visit the Bonneville Salt Flats. There was nothing happening there at the time; I just wanted to see the place and be able to say that I had been there. While at Bonneville and in Wendover, across the border in Nevada, we visited several sites that appear in the movie The World’s Fastest Indian. I’ve seen numerous interesting places across the Midwest and Great Plains states, too, but will always wish I had started riding earlier in life.
