Building a foundation for success

This always blows my fans’ mind – public figure-me, GaryVee, brings a lot of value to people candor-wise, because there’s no human. I’m speaking on stage. But Gary Vaynerchuk, the CEO, really struggled. ‘Kind candor’ is now an essential element of our culture and is moving us up. We needed that bad. It’s really made a huge impact.

I am the Chairman of Duval & Stachenfeld.  I was the former Managing Partner.  Last year – 2019 – was a terribly tough year for us.  We were dealing with a mixture of difficult internal issues, some of which pertained to succession/transition issues from me to my successor Managing Partner.  We had some high level departures and internal issues pertaining to the cohesiveness of our team.  Despite a (very) strong underlying business, morale had dropped dramatically.

In stepped Handel.  And you saved us!

You and your colleagues were insightful, creative, tough, no-nonsense but at the same time emotive and sympathetic.  You figured out what was going on and steered us through.  It was most impressive.

A year later – we are forged into a tight and strong fighting force that loves the firm and is committed to its success.  Indeed, for the first time, things are like they were in “the good old days.”  Even though we are now steering through the COVID 19 crisis, I have zero doubt about our survival and indeed that we will emerge even stronger than before.  That’s what happens when you have a strong culture of committed people, and Handel was critical in getting us back to what we were.