About David Andres

My Why

My purpose in life is to solve the problems and the challenges faced by myself and others. I love a “hot mess,” and I am not scared of much. I have learned to apply gratitude and empathy as my first response to every situation, which has calmed me down significantly over the years. Becoming aware of my own “pain points” or vulnerabilities has profoundly increased both my effectiveness and my happiness. “Now it’s like this” and “being present” are mantras that help me to embrace obstacles and challenges, so that I can focus my energy on solving them—rather than reacting against, denying, or avoiding them.

My purpose in life is also to help myself and others imagine new realities that do not yet exist. I refer to this in my consulting as “waving your magic wand” – visioning desired outcomes as if time, people, energy, and resources were unlimited.

My superpower is helping clients follow their own unique process toward excellence. I guide my clients in making honest self-assessments of their business realities, and then, with gratitude, empathy, and openness, we imagine and articulate desired outcomes, explore a range of options for attaining them, and ultimately commit to and execute on a strategy that promises to be successful within the unique business culture of their organization.

I believe that lasting change usually happens incrementally, through shifts in thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors that reinforce and build upon each other. I share ideas, strategies, tactics, and stories of past successes to realize improvements on the order of 1-3%, then tweak the process to achieve another 1-3% improvement, then another, then another. Over time, this adds up to substantial change that supports lasting growth in revenue, efficiency, and profitability.

We begin with the end in mind (see The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen R. Covey), and we practice, practice, practice until we achieve the desired outcomes. Getting in shape and remaining fit cannot be achieved in one long session at the gym, but thirty minutes a day will absolutely get you there. And once you reach your fitness goals, you can’t stop working out. It’s an “infinite process,” as Simon Sinek describes it.

I am a happy person, and I seek to help others find the freedom to focus on what makes them happy. We are at our best when our personal and professional “Whys” are closely aligned or, ideally, one and the same. I often say that I haven’t worked a day in 30 years, and this is true for me. Because of this, I have more than enough energy to achieve my goals, and hard work rarely stresses me out or makes me tired. I love what I do, and I continue striving to improve, as I breathe deeply and remain present in each moment with myself and others.

I enjoy playing as hard as I ply my trade. My desire is to be warm vs. cold, thus I moved to Houston after raising my family in the Northeast. I plan to retire (well, I’ll never really retire … it’s not in my nature) near the ocean and listen to the waves and dip my toes into the water. I enjoy golf, boating, skiing, hiking, camping and some hunting.

My Experience

Right out of college, I accepted the second employee position at Trap-Zap Environmental Systems, Inc. (at that time, a startup) and moved to New Jersey. Over the next five and a half years, we grew this bacteria treatment system for food-service grease traps to thousands of customers across the Northeast.

That fall, in an effort to focus on its most profitable business units, Russel Reid divested of more than 600 – 21,000-gallon frac tanks, while adding a dozen Peterbilt tractors with 7,000-gallon trailers to support our bulk liquid pumping, transportation, and disposal business. We added numerous 5,000-gallon straight trucks, as well. It was not uncommon for us to move up to 70,000 gallons per day of industrial wastewater, or to show up with 15 – 5,000-gallon straight trucks to move bentonite liquid from a Michels horizontal directional drilling job site.

In 2001, I was fortunate to have been designated as the single point of contact for NYC’s Office of Emergency Management as Mr. John responded to the World Trade Center disaster and clean up. By September 13 (two days after that tragic day), we had deployed 750 toilets and put them on daily service that continued for years. By showing up with boots on the ground, we ended up providing sanitation services to every contractor at Ground Zero, including Tully Construction, Bovis Lend Lease, Turner, Tishman, Sugrue Contracting, and many others.

In 2006, I joined Grease Guard and Spotless Touch in Elgin, Illinois and moved my pregnant wife and two daughters back to Chicagoland. Elgin is not Chicago, however, and we decided as a family to return to New Jersey after eleven months. I assisted the owners of Grease Guard and Spotless Touch with renaming and rebranding their firm as Facilitec. Shortly after I left, they sold their business to Ecolab, Inc.

Between 2006 and 2017, I spread my entrepreneurial and consulting wings in a variety of ways—consulting to PROs, writing Playbooks, and providing M&A, due diligence, and expert witness services through my consulting firms, Preferred Solutions d2, LLC and Bionic Thumbs, Inc. With partners, I founded Stadium Associates, LLC, obtaining both MLB and NFL licenses to sell sections of game-used sod/turf as collectibles, and making similar deals with NCAA teams and facilities. With partners, I founded Bionic Filter Solutions, Inc. to exploit a proprietary technology for removing solids from liquid wastewater. I became the exclusive US importer of Cuba Libre^TM, rum and coke in a can.

In 2010, I was retained by Dan Scully and Peter Tully of Tully Environmental, Inc. in Flushing, New York to provide due diligence services related to their acquisition of EarthCare in nearby Deer Park. After completing a successful purchase, I joined their team as Co-General Manager along with David Galbraith who focused on operations. Within six months, we rebranded EarthCare as ClearBrook, including a new website. David is still running the show at ClearBrook today.

Over the years, I have worked closely with several PRO buyers to find and acquire tuck-ins, and several PRO sellers to prepare their businesses for sale. I am particularly proud of the acquisition of the Washington DC satellite of A Royal Flush, Inc., based in Bridgeport, Connecticut, by my client Don’s Johns (now part of United Site Services, Inc.) in 2008. The deal took only 47 days to complete. I enjoy finding companies to buy and assisting owners with selling their businesses. I offer insights, perspective, and context to find common ground so that both parties can transact with confidence.

In 2017, as the PRO industry was booming, I decided to throw my employee hat back into the ring. I joined Reliable On-Site Services (ROS), a new division of United Rentals, Inc. (URI) on May 1. On May 13, the ROS and URI Gen Rents team deployed at the US Navy’s Fleet Week celebration in Manhattan, supplying toilets, sinks, holding tanks, restroom trailers, roll offs, light towers, and generators, as a supplier for MLS Corporation. Fleet Week is a three-day event on five NYC piers that generates hundreds of thousands in revenue.

I was able to bring the Fleet Week job with me to ROS because I had recently reconnected with Mike Darby at MLS. Years earlier, while at Mr. John, I personally had handled 9 Fleet Week events for Mike, but we had not spoken in the 11 years that had passed since I left Mr. John.  After catching up on family and sharing that I was getting back in, I asked Mike if I could handle Fleet Week again. Mike immediately gave me the event—without knowing which of two pending job offers I would accept (the other offer was from United Site Services, Inc.). It was just like riding a bike—but better—as I was able to give ROS the job, replacing Sunbelt Rentals, Inc. (light towers and generators) and Mr. John/Russell Reid (everything else) who had had it for years. I continued utilizing Russell Reid as a sub-contractor for roll offs.

Ironically, my time at ROS lasted only 6 months. On November 8, Tom Jones met me in the parking lot of a URI branch, ostensibly for our first one-on-one strategy meeting, and fired me. After an exit interview the following day, I accepted a 7-month severance. I had imagined myself finishing my career at URI and ROS, but the Universe had other things for me to accomplish.

I am proud to have introduced Tom and United Rentals to Phil Vetter and Ryan Anthony, who continue to lead the charge as ROS expands across the US. And I will always be grateful for my time working with Sandy Rogers, an inside sales representative at ROS, with whom I worked hand-in-glove. I can’t thank her enough for masterfully managing the fire hose of activity I generated—including three weeks of 24/7 activity in response to Hurricane Harvey that generated $2.3 million in revenue. She is a top-shelf professional who seldom gets the credit she deserves—although recently she was named 2021 Inside Sales Representative of the Year (so happy for you, Sandy, and congratulations!). People like Sandy, with her tireless work ethic and positive attitude, are the kind of people I love working alongside.

In 2018, I moved to Houston and joined Sanitrax International as their US representative in charge of sales. This included acting as Live Nation’s single point of contact for deploying freshwater flushing vacuum sanitation at C3 Presents and US Festival Operations. I also worked closely with Cirque du Soleil and traveled to Mexico and Ecuador in support of their big-top tent shows like Luzia, Kooza and others. Carter Brightman at Rentals-to-Go in Norwich, NY was the first US PRO to buy Sanitrax. I also supported Deployed Resources, LLC (DR) as they expanded their use of Sanitrax for US government camps along the border. Clay Brock at DR was great to work with and remains a good friend always.

I am immensely proud of all the salespeople I have hired, coached, trained, and mentored over the years, and one in particular is worth mentioning here. I posted an ad in the Rutgers University daily newspaper for an inside sales spot at Mr. John. None other than Jordan Serenkin responded. We hired him and he absolutely killed it from day one bringing to bear his exceptional innate skills and talents that can’t be taught. When I left at the end of March 2006, Jordan, who had been promoted several times and was our Sales Manager, was quickly promoted to Vice President, Sales & Marketing. To this day he remains at Mr. John, now owned by USS, where he is Director of Special Events, North America under Robert Harrison. I have never met or spoken to Robert, yet I am confident he finds Jordan to be invaluable.

Part of my legacy, experience, and consulting today is being able to find, coach, mentor, train and provide an environment where people like Jordan can achieve optimal performance. Other notable industry professionals I have coached include the “Dependable” Joe Cicchetti, Krissie Giamella, Brenda Davis, Patricia Hurely, Fred Farina, Scott Withers, Gene Hyrcak, Dawn Johnson, Denise Savonarola, Viola Sarkantyus, Lucas Ingram, Nancy Kazimir, Sandy Rogers and many more.

Since leaving Sanitrax, I have doubled down on consulting to PROs through my company Follow Your Process, Inc. To raise awareness and as a service to the PRO industry, I host a live video podcast in which I explore life and business topics with PROs, customers, suppliers, and especially innovators—many related to temporary sanitation. I ask a lot of questions and we tell a lot of stories to help viewers achieve their desired outcomes—sooner. We produced 9 episodes in Season 1 (2020) and Season 2 began in January of 2022. I go live with a new episode every week, streaming simultaneously on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn.