PART I of III of our interview with DR. Valentino (Val) P. De Rocili, President of Compliance Environmental, Inc., an Environmental Health and Safety consulting firm located in Dover, Delaware. Originally from Wilmington, Delaware, he earned an undergraduate degree in Agricultural Engineering Technology from the University of Delaware. He completed a Master of Business Administration degree from Wilmington University, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Safety Engineering from Kennedy-Western University. He is a Certified Hazardous Materials Manager at the Master Level and has numerous certifications in the areas of leadbased paint, asbestos, and infrared thermography.
FSCPA: How many years have you been in business?
Val: 17
FSCPA: How many employees do you have?
Val: 7
FSCPA: What is the story of your business in a nutshell?
Val: I started my business in my working from my basement after I resigned from my job of 11 years. I was a VP at George and Lynch. I started their environmental division. I wrote a business plan for my division. They decided not to pursue it and it was probably a good idea for them not to at the time, based on everything that was going on. The problem was, they were running out of environmental work. The kind of work they were doing dried completely up and I predicted that. I felt the company needed to move in a different direction and they didn’t. I was upset about it at first but not any more. Everybody moved on.
FSCPA: How did you capitalize your company?
Val: I capitalized my company with my savings account. The key to the financing part is to sit down with a pencil, paper, and a calculator and figure out the worst case scenario that (quitting your job and starting a business) might bring about. When I did that, I figured out that even if I didn’t have a client for six months we wouldn’t lose anything we owned - the house, the car, the furniture. So I looked at that and said wow – where is the risk? Because I believed I’d have at least one client by then. As it turns out, within the first week I signed three clients and two of the three are still with us. I also got a couple job offers that week from other companies that were good offers!
FSCPA: What modes of marketing have you found most fruitful?
Val: We have telephone book ads, Delaware Today ads, and ads in some of the industrial magazines people read in the industry but our marketing success has been primarily twofold: 1) word of mouth, 2) we have been doing professional presentations for years at different conferences. They see your ability and pretty much the word gets around, so it all ends up at word of mouth. We tell them who we are and if they ask what we can do for them, we tell them. I have found that people who are in an industry and who need a good consultant will be talking to each other and eventually your name will get out there. I just got a call today from a client who we are doing one thing for and he is finding out from other clients that we do other things. He wants to talk to me about handling those other items for his business. It is a slow and hard process but you build a stable business by developing word of mouth advertising.
FSCPA: What drew you both to this field of work and to being self-employed?
Val: Field of work, I knew from very early on, before I went to college what I wanted to do. I knew that because I knew what my talents were. Not just consulting – people have called me a natural consultant – but also the environmental part. The other part of that was I grew up at the time the regulations were being written so I have great insight into why certain things are done the way they are. The natural thing was for me to go into environmental consulting. And, I’ll tell you, that is the first step and it is probably the hardest thing you’ll have to do. You need to sit down and decide what you are naturally good at because that is the thing you will probably enjoy doing more than anything else and then you’ll be, most likely, successful at it.
What I like about being self-employed is that you can see the fruits of your labor a lot better than if you are working for someone else. On the other hand you can fall a lot harder than you could working for someone else, but that kind of appealed to me. I am a risk manager but I will do things sometimes with calculated risks. I’ll do things for my client with calculated risk. I don’t always win but certainly the majority of the time the risk pays off. That is really all you have to do is win the majority of the time.
Let me say something about risk that might be helpful. Here is another thing I got from someone and don’t remember who but, in any case, the analogy is that business is like a boat on the water and it matters what the magnitude of your errors are. So if your mistakes are punching holes in the boat but you are punching holes above the water level, those mistakes can be fixed and won’t be a problem. If you punch a hole below the water line, that can be a problem. So understanding the magnitude of the choices you are making is the key to risk management.
FSCPA: If you could start the business from scratch again, is there anything you would do differently?
Val: You are going to laugh at my answer because I would say nothing. I have been lucky in terms of the fact that my strategies worked so it was right. What else can you say!
FSCPA: How many hours do you work per week on average?
Val: Ah well – it’s more than 40! I would say between 60 and 70. I am very hands on with the company. It’s like having a baby is what it is. The baby has needs, and you are constantly servicing those needs. The thing about this is you HAVE to work the hours. If you don’t, it won’t work. You have to put the hours in. What you ask yourself is: Is the time effective? Why am I doing this? Could I have someone else do this? So you delegate some but I have seen a lot of businesses fail because the owners say: “Well I am the boss now. I’m going to go and play golf.” You have to remember that you ARE the business. You inspire the employees to work hard. So if you are off playing golf, do you think they will be inspired to work hard for you? I don’t think so. It’s a tough thing to do and, as my wife says, you have to be unique to own a business because you have to balance your home life and your business life. But you have to put the hours in. How you do that is the magic.
FSCPA: Where do you see yourself and your company in 5 years?
Val: Pretty much where we are today. We’re surviving and we make money. I don’t see ourselves adding a lot of people on because we want to keep the quality there. I don’t see ourselves adding a lot of clients although we will add clients because some will drop off. So I see ourselves sustaining. I don’t foresee tremendous growth although we will have some growth. I have turned down a lot of quick money opportunities when times were good and I probably will continue to do so. That was wise because those were things that, when I followed up on them, I found they had dried up anyway, sooner than when people were telling me they would. These were opportunities where they were asking me, for example, for a 5 year commitment and the venture only lasted a year and half anyway, so no one knows what will happen in the future. Five years - I see ourselves sustaining, which is important, with some growth, but I am pretty happy. I’ll still be at the helm if I am still here. I am not one to want to want to retire at 55 and I never have been.
Stay tuned for the remaining interview. Thanks so much to Dr. De Rocili for his time. To suggest an entrepreneur for us to interview for this blog please contact Kathy at k.sarchett@mytypeofcpa.com
