Denis Jones – EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2024 – Regional Award Winner
Episode
Phil Bliss, Founder of Canada’s Podcast interviews Denis Jones after receiving the Award November 26, 2024. EY Entrepreneur Of...
Key takeaways
- The ability to adapt and pivot your business plan multiple times throughout your career is essential for entrepreneurial success.
- Vertical integration across your company creates resilience by allowing you to take profit at different levels and offer more competitive pricing to customers.
- Building a strong team with core talent and great people is more important than having a perfect business plan or model.
- Fostering a can-do, never-say-die attitude among your team members is crucial for navigating tough markets and overcoming challenges.
- Tenacity and the refusal to give up when facing obstacles—finding ways to go over, under, around, or through them—is the defining characteristic of successful entrepreneurs.
Transcript
Full transcript page · Interactive episode
============================================================ TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS ============================================================ [00:00] SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Candace Podcast. [00:05] SPEAKER_01: Hi, I'm Phil Bliss, founder and CEO of Candace Podcast. [00:10] SPEAKER_01: And today we're going to meet Dennis Jones, CEO of DeVro Group. [00:15] SPEAKER_00: I will, how are you? [00:17] SPEAKER_01: Very good. [00:18] SPEAKER_01: It's great to see you here and congratulations on making it into the sort of the regional award [00:27] SPEAKER_01: and now into the sort of national finish, if you like. [00:33] SPEAKER_01: What I really want you to talk about is the journey you've taken to get here. [00:40] SPEAKER_01: Just highlight some of the key things that really kind of say why you're here. [00:51] SPEAKER_00: Well, I think the most important thing, Phil, is being able to adapt, being able to pivot, [00:59] SPEAKER_00: being able to have a business plan, but realize that the business plan that you have is going to change, [01:04] SPEAKER_00: you know, 10 times, 20 times, 30 times over the course of your career. [01:09] SPEAKER_00: And being able to adapt, being able to add on, we've successfully vertically integrated throughout the company, [01:17] SPEAKER_00: which gives us a lot of resilience. [01:20] SPEAKER_00: You know, we take profit at different levels. [01:22] SPEAKER_00: And because of that, we're able to give discounted rates on all of our services, [01:27] SPEAKER_00: make our product very, very cost effective and appealing in the market. [01:32] SPEAKER_00: And that's really driven our success. [01:35] SPEAKER_00: You know, the other thing that we've done is we've really focused on core talent and great people. [01:41] SPEAKER_00: You know, you could have a dream, you can have a business plan, you can have a great model, [01:47] SPEAKER_00: but if you don't have the team to help you execute it, you're not going to get there. [01:52] SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, I'd say the two things that I would value the most are my team members, [01:57] SPEAKER_00: their abilities, their, you sort of never say die attitude. [02:02] SPEAKER_00: And, you know, and my ability to sort of encourage people to adopt a can-do attitude [02:09] SPEAKER_00: and find ways to make us more resilient in a tough market. [02:15] SPEAKER_01: That's great, great advice. [02:17] SPEAKER_01: I just want one more thing from you. [02:20] SPEAKER_01: You know, that was good general advice, but when it comes to your personal characteristic [02:27] SPEAKER_01: of being a successful entrepreneur, which you are, [02:33] SPEAKER_01: what is that kind of magic that, you know, made you achieve so much? [02:41] SPEAKER_00: Well, if I had to use one word, it would be tenacity. [02:46] SPEAKER_00: You know, the decision or the ability to never give up to find a way around it. [02:53] SPEAKER_00: I tell my team every day, we're going to hit obstacles. [02:56] SPEAKER_00: We either go over them, we go under them, we go around them, [02:59] SPEAKER_00: and if we can't find a way around those, we go through them. [03:01] SPEAKER_00: But we're not stopping. If we're going to fail, we fail forward, and we get up, and we go again. [03:05] SPEAKER_00: But we don't go backwards, and we just keep going. [03:09] SPEAKER_00: And it's tenacity. Tenacity, I think, is everything. [03:13] SPEAKER_01: You got it. Thanks for coming on Canada's podcast, and good luck with the EY Awards. [03:21] SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much. It was great meeting you.