Before I start talking about myself, I would like to tell you about the most important person in my life and that is my wife Terry. For the past 30 years, Terry has been my wife, my best friend and my strongest supporter. We both share a passion for customer service and the continual improvement process. I would not have been able to accomplish what I have if it wasn’t for Terry’s support and participation in my successes. I guess this is where I am supposed to tell you how great I am and list all my accomplishments in my life in an attempt to impress you. However, I owe my successes to the Teams that I have assembled over the past 30+ years. It was my job as a coach to make sure that I had the best people in the right positions, so those Teams could succeed. There were two common threads that ran through each of these organizations. They were Extreme Customer Service ® and the Continual Improvement Process. Since I tend to be a very creative person, I would also say that my out of the box approach to Sales and Marketing didn’t hurt either!

In the past as President, one of the things that I enjoyed most was receiving letters and e-mails from customers going on and on about the extraordinary customer service they received from our employees. I often pointed out the fact that my name wasn’t on those letters; it was the employees’ names. It was my job to create a culture where the focus was on customer service and to empower employees to provide Extreme Customer Service®.

In 2004, at the age of 50, during a routine colonoscopy, it was determined that I had colon cancer. Over the next few months, I would undergo surgery for the cancer and spend time at home recovering.

During that period, I had time on my hands and started to contemplate what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. This was a wakeup call for me and it gave me a second chance at life. When I went back to work, I had made up my mind that I was going to change my career, but I needed to make sure that the company I was running would be ok. After all, I had both friends and family working there. This would take more than a year to put together.

I knew that I wanted a change in career and wanted to bring more balance into my life. But I wasn’t sure what my next journey would be. I hired two personal coaches and took several personality tests to profile my likes, dislikes, strengths and weaknesses to help me along the way.

After a three month process, it was clear that my strengths were in the areas of coaching, teaching and team building.

In June of 2007, we launched our new company called Innovative Business Partners, Inc. Today all over the United States, IBP helps President’s and CEO’s Drive Their Sales, Drive Their Profits and Improve Their Teams.

Little did I know when I received the diagnosis of cancer that it would change my life, my career and allow me to follow my dreams!

Thank you very much for taking the time to listen to my story,
Joe