January 2015

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Our People…

with Steve Morgan

We wanted to kick off 2015 really strong with this next Our People profile. We recently interviewed Steve Morgan, Noise Solutions’ Executive Vice President, to share a bit about his successes, not only in his career, but also in life.

In this Q&A, Steve invites us into his fascinating world that will inspire, delight and engage. As you’ll discover, this trailblazer lives life with passion. Steve is an opportunity-seeker, an over-achiever and he puts 110 percent into all aspects of his work life and his personal life – as he calls it, work-life quality.

A jack of many trades, Steve is also an incredible artist and shares some of his illustrations with us.

So, let’s take a look at what he had to say.

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NS: Can you tell us a bit about where you’re from and what inspired your appetite for sales?

Steve: I was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and lived in various parts of England and Canada until the age of 13. Because we moved around so much, I never put much value into where I lived. It was all about family for me. As long as I had that support behind me, it didn’t matter where we lived.

My parents are immigrants from England and they grew up living-side-by-side in Birmingham during the Second World War. They moved to Canada in the 1950s, and now live in Niagara Falls, Canada. My dad is an artist and my mom was a Realtor. She is the one that got me interested in business, and my dad always wanted me to become an artist, so growing up, I was fortunate to have both influences.

________________________________________________________________________ Our People with Steve Morgan, Noise Solutions’ Executive Vice President

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Today, I share the skills and passion for both. I really enjoy working with oils and charcoals and I paint whenever I get the opportunity.

I have also made some pretty cool pieces of furniture. I like that creative side of me, and I think it complements my aptitude for business because I’m not held to any boundaries as far as the way I think. I can look beyond ‘the norm’ and what has been done in the past to find new ways of doing things.

Through my high school years, we lived Pickering, Ontario, just east of Toronto. I worked part-time at two different jobs – on Mondays and Tuesdays, I worked for a local newspaper called Pickering’s Bay News, writing and illustrating a comic strip, and also doing the ad layouts.

I would sometimes work until 3:00AM on Tuesday nights to meet the print deadline that morning. It was a great experience and it taught me about discipline.

I was also a sales associate at a shoe store. My manager at the time, whom I still keep in touch with, was a real strong and driven sales guy. I latched onto him to learn all I could.

I continued working in the shoe business until I was about 27. I really wanted to start working for myself, so I put some money aside to eventually open my own shoe store.

One afternoon, I was chatting with a friend who was quite successful supplying window coverings to businesses. The margins were huge and he didn’t have to carry inventory. As you sold, you would buy. I was intrigued by our conversation and began thinking that I could turn this into a small private business, which is exactly what I did. I received my business license for Statement Interior and Window Designs in 1987.

I understood early on that if I multiply myself, I could multiply business, so I ran an ad on the front page of a local bargain paper in Niagara Falls, where I was living at the time. I came up with a concept that would allow you to build your own quote right from the ad. You could take rough measurements of your window, select a fabric, and then figure out the price from a grid pattern. I even offered free installation. I put an answering machine in the house and I went to work at the shoe store, where I was still store manager.

When I arrived home that evening the machine was completely full with messages from people who wanted my business. I returned every call and over the next three days, I made house calls after work each night, and that put $30,000 into my pocket. That’s when I realized I had something very unique and extremely profitable.

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In three years, Statement Interior and Window Designs became the largest independent retailer of window coverings in Southern Ontario. I had five people on the road selling and four others installing. It was this experience that taught me the secret to it all: express confidence and appear bigger than you really are as far as the company is concerned.

Before I knew it, I landed the contract for all Denny’s Diners in southern Ontario.

It wasn’t long after, that I started to work on hotels and condo complexes. Then, after four successful years, I decided to explore new opportunities.

In 1991, I joined Brown Shoe Company as Sales Manager and looked after the southern Ontario district. One day, I was with my boss driving around to see how my stores were doing, and he told me that the Alberta district was struggling, and asked if I would consider going out there for two years to turn it around. I was looking for a change of scenery and without hesitating, I said yes.

That was 20 years ago and it was the best move I ever made. I was ferocious in getting that district back on track. I’ve never been one to let bad business, the environment or news affect the way we were going to succeed.

There had never been anyone to truly drive the team, and that first year we struggled. It was terrible. So, I hired driven and passionate team leaders, and we built a strong training program, which has become the standard training program at Brown. In just one year, we completely turned the Alberta district around and it became the top selling district in all of Canada. I was very proud of that time in my career. We had the highest increases, the best payroll, the most new programs and a surplus of great talent.

That experience taught me a lot that I apply in business today:

1) Never give up;

2) Always be there first;

3) Have high energy and a competitive edge;

4) The hardest working people are the luckiest

Always surround yourself with people that are greater than you. All they are looking for is guidance and you can help them grow.

________________________________________________________________________ Our People with Steve Morgan, Noise Solutions’ Executive Vice President

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NS: What attracted you to Noise Solutions and the Sales Manager role that you were hired for?

Steve: I was living next door to the President of Noise Solutions, Scott MacDonald, and we became good friends. We would often help each other with projects around the house, and I was helping Scott with some landscaping one weekend. He mentioned he was in need of a Sales Manager, and I said, ‘You need to find someone like me. Someone with high energy who will push for you, believe in the product, and build not just their sales, but also the company.’ Scott asked, ‘What would that cost?’ I told him I wasn’t looking for a new job. I was with Brown Shoe Company for the past 14 years and I really loved it. But Scott never gave up and kept asking me to consider it. After some time, I gave in and said I would meet with Noise Solutions co-founder Rod MacDonald and their Operations Manager, just to discuss it. The way they presented the opportunity sounded really exciting. I knew nothing of what the company did, but I felt there was a huge opportunity for me here.

So I bit the bullet and in September 2004, I came to Noise Solutions.

The first year was tough. At the time, I didn’t understand the industry or the products. It was so far removed from where I came from in the fashion industry. I spent many nights reading and trying to figure it all out. I struggled to get sales and to build relationships with clients. It took about a year to really start to get traction and once I did, I wouldn’t let it go for anything!

There were many times I quit in my head, but every morning I got back up and went at it again, and I never gave up.

I would be reminded of that little old lady who came to the shoe store yelling because her Cocker Spaniel chewed the heel off her shoe, and was demanding a refund. She was a lot tougher than any engineer and his issues.

I owe a lot to Scott and Rod for believing in me that first year. I knew there was greatness here, and that I could make a difference. Noise Solutions was poised to grow and if I could just get that traction, I could really be part of that. After that first tough year, I’ve never looked back. Once it all started to click into place, I really began to enjoy the hunt and kill of the industry.

I pride myself on staying on top of it all the time. I was presenting more and more Lunch and Learns, the sales were coming in, and my confidence was growing.

________________________________________________________________________ Our People with Steve Morgan, Noise Solutions’ Executive Vice President

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I knew it was time to apply that recipe of multiplying myself.

NS: You saw the potential to expand your efforts early on, to not only lead the industry in Canada, but also to break into the US. Can you tell us about that?

Steve: I was now with Noise Solutions for four years and sales were the best they had ever been. But on my own, I could only do so much.

I was chatting with Scott one morning and told him I didn’t want to sell anymore. If I could teach others to sell the way I sell, now we’ve got the magic!

Scott was skeptical. But Noise Solutions needed to get more leverage into a lot of the bigger Oil and Gas companies, so eventually he gave in.

In 2008, I was promoted to Vice President of Business Development so that we could open up doors quicker and to start building the

Business Development team. We hired Lindsey, our first sales employee based out of Denver, Colorado. We knew that area was ripe for the picking.

Today, we have five brilliant sales people in Canada and the US. Just last year, Noise Solutions celebrated its best year ever and I didn’t sell anything, all I did was guide my team. In my earlier days a $250,000 sale was massive, but now we’re getting jobs for as much as 7 Million!

NS: Can you share some of your biggest accomplishments during your time in that role?

Steve: Some of my best successes, quite honestly, are Anne-Marie, Lindsey and now Christine. I’ve been able to mentor and grow all three from their positions in Technical Sales to three brilliant Business Development Leads. I take a lot of pride in those three; what they have achieved already and what they’re still going to accomplish. I see them as future leaders of this company.

Then we have others like Shawn, who is brilliant in his own right, and very seasoned at what he does; and Tyler who has been with the company for about nine years and recently joined the team. He is doing a great job and quickly becoming a strong Business Development Engineer.

It’s these types of things that I take the most pride in, and because of those five people, we were able to celebrate our best year yet.

Lindsey and I cracked open the Marcellus in 2011 and 2012. We went from 0 sales to 60% of our volume in the first year.

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Every two weeks for two years, we were out there pounding the roads.

Then in 2013, we hired our first Business Development Lead in the US East to focus on that area. Now, Shawn and Tyler own it and they’re making incredible progress out there.

NS: What made you realize Noise Solutions needed to be in the Marcellus, and how did you break into that market?

Steve: The whole thing was well orchestrated right from the beginning. I heard about Marcellus, this up-and-coming natural gas play. We did a lot of research on it and presented a strong argument to the management team. Noise Solutions needed to focus on the US, and specifically into Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. I presented the opportunity and identified the

milestones over the next five years. I look back on that with a great amount of pride because we nailed it almost to the tee on everything.

We also tried things that we never did before. LinkedIn was becoming a strong networking tool for business, so I began using it to see what I could get from it. It quickly proved to be an instrumental tool. We were able to reach into that area, find the right people to connect with, and secure the meetings we needed.

There was one week where Lindsey and I flew into Pennsylvania on Sunday, and on Monday we had four back-to-back presentations with prominent players in the industry. We had two more on Tuesday and then drove to Michigan for another big presentation on Wednesday.

That company’s Vice President of Sales had been noticing all of my activity on LinkedIn and asked if I would present to his sales group on using social media for business. I did an off the cuff presentation to his team and then Lindsey and I drove off to Chicago where we had our 8th presentation that week.

We began to realize that Noise Solutions was doing something that a lot of companies have never done, or even tried to do. We began to talk about the youthfulness of Noise Solutions. Something that we always felt we needed to apologize for, we now wanted to embrace.

That was a memorable week. On our drive to Chicago, a piece of plate steel fell off a truck in front of us and it jammed into the front of our rental SUV. We didn’t have time to trade the vehicle in because we needed to be in Chicago for our next meeting, so we drove it all the way hoping the SUV stayed on the road. Thankfully, it did!

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Our People with Steve Morgan, Noise Solutions’ Executive Vice President

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That next Lunch and Learn presentation was at a firm that did a lot of work in the mining industry, and when I made the appointment, I was told we have 10 minutes to impress them. I began the presentation using their whiteboard and building excitement around the table. About 10 minutes in, I was told to stop. I was instantly deflated thinking I didn’t do it. Then the person who requested me to stop, turned to the guy beside me and asked him to gather up a few other people who he thought needed to see and hear my presentation. They entered the room and I continued on until I was stopped again so that they could bring more people in. It was incredible, and we are still doing business with that company.

I love the energy and the youthfulness of Noise Solutions. The people who work here are brilliant.

I love the charisma of Shawn, the passion of Lindsey, and the eagerness of Christine. Anne Marie is tough and such a great business person. I love watching her! I’ve known Anne Marie since she was 18 and to see her grow into the person she is today is amazing. She is a very strong force in the industry.

Then there’s Tyler, who began working part-time as a welder at Noise Solutions Manufacturing while he was still in high school. He has moved on and up within the company, and he recently received his Professional Engineering License in Canada. I’ve loved collaborating with him all the way through his career, and now we get to have him on the Business Development team. You can’t turn him off. He is really on fire!

NS: Can you think back to a Noise Solutions client that you worked with where the outcome of your efforts was heartwarming or left you feeling proud?

Steve: There have been many over the years, but I would have to call out my friend Joe Sanchez. He was at Anadarko at the time, in Brighton, Colorado, and he was the toughest guy I had ever met. I would take every opportunity to knock on his door, send him an email and take him to lunch, and he would never bite.

Until that one day, finally we got a small job. There was an auxiliary cooler that was situated close to a resident that lived up the hill from the facility and it wasn’t in compliance with the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission’s Aesthetic and Noise Control Regulations, so it required noise mitigation to get it into compliance. Joe finally gave us a job.

He said they usually deal with another company for things like this but he asked Noise Solutions to fix it. We did the job and blew them away.

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Joe couldn’t believe that you couldn’t hear it running. From there, we did two more units on the site, and then we got an additional 13 facilities on another site, and it has just grown from there.

Now, whenever Joe needs something or has a problem he calls me directly. There is a great relationship between the two of us that I truly value.

I ran into him last summer at a golf tournament in Denver and he said, ‘Steve, you’re my second most favorite sales guy out there.’ I asked why I’m only second and he said because Lindsey is first. Right then I knew I completely won because I’ve molded this girl into a machine that Joe Sanchez, with all this power, just loves to deal with all the time.

NS: In 2014, you were appointed Executive Vice President at Noise Solutions, how did that come about and what is your vision for this role?

Steve: I wanted to have more of an influence on the entire company and its operations by bringing in new ideas and applying what we’re doing in the sales team to the rest of the company. I wanted to bring that energy, commitment and drive that we nurture in

Business Development to the rest of the company.

I had been talking to Scott for a while about my next role and what I wanted to do with the company. In March of last year, I was appointed Executive Vice President and since then I’ve been focused on strengthening our quality culture and implementing new processes.

I enjoy my visits to our manufacturing plant in Delburne, Alberta. I try to get out there as often as possible and I always engage with our staff working on the shop floor.

I like to learn about what they do, and I ask them. When I do that, they become the teacher and I’m the student and that empowers them. Their ideas begin to flow and it’s exactly what I hope to achieve. I’m not good with the details but I’m great at inspiring people to be better, to set goals for themselves, and then to help them achieve it.

I want to bring the company to a whole new level of professionalism and growth. I think you can achieve anything you want if you are truly willing to invest. I believe there’s a moral compass that leaders must have within a company. I think it’s important to give back internally to those that are helping the

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business grow. It’s important that it’s not just about monetary giving back, but also helping improve the quality of people’s lives, and I think Noise Solutions can do that. That’s something that Rod said to me when I first started to work here, more than 10 years ago. He said Noise Solutions can change my life, and he was right, it did. I want to give that back to others in the company. My goal for about five years from now is to be standing on stage in front of 1000 Noise Solutions employees and their family members, giving an emotionally-driven motivational speech. I want to present our employees with deserving awards at a gala event.

Can you imagine being that person called up on stage to accept an award for the best designer, the top sales person, the most successful patent, or whatever it is? Not only are your peers and co-workers in the audience, but also your wife or husband, your children, and the people that mean the most to you. Take that a step further and our clients are there too. That would be an incredibly high energy and exciting evening for everyone and I intend on making it a reality.

NS: What are your biggest strengths?

Steve: I work very hard. I’m focused, I set lofty goals and I achieve them. I’m not the smartest guy out there but I never give up. I analyze and figure out what the best path is for the company, and what it is for me, both in my personal life and in my professional life. I throw everything I have at it.

I don’t believe in work-life balance. I only believe there is work-life quality. Sometimes it will be 80% work and 20% life, but I give 110% to that 20% so that my wife understands how much I love her. Other times it will be the other way around, but I am fully committed to Noise Solutions and its employees during that 20%. I think that’s a better way of looking at it.

We make a conscious decision each day to be in a good mood or a bad mood, to feel ill or to not feel ill, and to push ourselves even when we don’t want to. It’s very easy to come home at night and say to your spouse, ‘Work was so hard please don’t talk to me, take the kids and watch TV, I’m just going upstairs to my room to be quiet for the evening.’ Or you can come home, hug your kids, kiss your wife and let them know how important they are in your life each day. That’s what I believe.

NS: In your opinion, what are the characteristics of a star employee?

Steve: A company has a certain responsibly to its employees to help them become a star employee. There needs to be an opportunity for employees to learn and grow, and they have to be willing to grow.

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A star employee comes from good mentorship, good training, good opportunities, good feedback, candid conversations and knowing that it’s OK to fail as long as lessons are learned.

I heard a great quote that I keep in my collection of quotes: Failure is Life’s Feedback. I just loved that. Who I am today is because of a series of failures that got me to this point.

There are those pinnacle moments in a person’s life where that one decision can change their life.

That happened to me when I was driving in a car with my boss who asked if I wanted to go to Alberta to transform the company’s failing district, and I said, yes! That one decision had such a grand effect on my life, and it changed completely. I would not have met my wife or Scott, and I wouldn’t be where I am right now if that didn’t happen.

It goes back to taking every opportunity you can. You never know when it’s going to come around again.

Opportunity is not going to kick the door down. It’s going to knock and you always have to be ready to open that door. You always have to be ready to extend your hand and help someone else because you don’t know what that’s going to do for you in return.

I’m a big believer in karma and doing the right thing to make someone else’s life just a little better, whether for the long term or the short term.

NS: What do you like most about working at Noise Solutions?

Steve: There are so many opportunities to be great and I love the freedom I’ve been afforded.

Scott is the type of guy who continues to take courses, read business books and constantly look for new ways of doing things, and there is a lot of freedom that way.

I don’t have a job description and I don’t want one because it allows me to do what I want and build what I want for the company. I can stretch and push and go and do, and that’s what I love about it.

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Noise Solutions has also afforded me the freedom to try new things like present at Olds College in Alberta, and write my book, The Experience, which I intend to finish in 2015.

I have been extremely fortunate, and I think that’s because I’m open to the opportunities that are coming at me all the time. If you truly are aware and open to what is happening to you all the time, and you can see the opportunity, that is going to pay dividends to you over and over and over again. I don’t miss many opportunities. I’m always watching.

I’m a big believer in evangelizing what you want to achieve. When I started to write the book, which one day I want to speak on, I started to put that out there and talked to different people about it. Before I knew it, a professor from Olds College called me and said a friend told him about me and they have a spot opening for a speaker in a couple of weeks. They wanted to know if I would be interested in the opportunity. There is huge value in putting your goals out there and talking to people about them. If you do that they’ll focus on trying to help you. I spoke on social media and sales and how they work together.

NS: Do you have a favorite pastime or hobby?

Steve: I love to paint, make furniture, collect cars, travel, read… There have been times at Noise Solutions when I have just suddenly said to Scott, I have to take a week off. I will bury myself in the basement and paint for an entire week, to re-energize and re-set, and then I’m good. Sometimes that creative drive in me gets too strong and I have to get it out there.

My wife and I were going through boxes recently and I come across an old sketch pad that I have, which I forgot even existed. I opened it to a page with a picture of a castle that I drew, and right beside it was a picture of a castle that my daughter drew when she was six-years-old. It brought me to tears because that was the start of the amazing creativity that young lady has now. It was incredible.

NS: What’s the best advice you ever received in business?

Steve: A mentor of mine, Robert St. Denis, this amazing French man and my boss at Brown Shoe Company, was a real inspiration to me. He was elegant in the way that he dressed, moved and spoke.

He used to say to me, ‘Steve, you’re the toughest guy I’ve ever had to work with because you are always testing me.’ I always pushed to go further and further. But he would always say:

“The hardest working people are the luckiest.”

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Robert passed away a few years ago, and that was really tough for me. He ate up life in every single way, whether it was working, in his personal life, his love life, whatever it was. And he had amazing taste in everything.

He could be tough at times but he was the type of person who made a difference in your life, how you conducted yourself and even your philosophies. He had such an influence on my life and he inspired me to quit smoking, lose weight and get healthy.

NS: Final thoughts?

Steve: I’m just very grateful for where I am. I’ve been afforded great opportunities and I’ve met some great people.

I’ve done my best to learn the lessons that were there to teach me, and I’ve been able see and grab hold of opportunities that are in front of me.

I’m also grateful to Scott and Rod for bringing me to Noise Solutions. This is an amazing place for me because I’ve been able to grow both myself, the company and the opportunities.

Our personal lives will intermingle with our professional lives and sometimes one will take over, but it’s all about having the sense to put everything you got into everything you do. NS

There’s no time to be sad or to be afraid, for me. I think you have to lead your life in courage. That means even the things you’re afraid of. You have to push past them and that will bring on true greatness.

________________________________________________________________________ Our People with Steve Morgan, Noise Solutions’ Executive Vice President