Meet David

David found early career success in Retail Sales moving rapidly from part-time sales consultant to retail store manager within twelve months at Express Locations. At the time, Express Locations was a small wireless dealer with a handful of stores in Arizona. As a manager, David had an opportunity to train and develop personnel for the first time. He fell in love with Talent Development after facilitating countless "lightbulb" moments for dozens of people and hearing their success stories, attributing much of their performance to his training. 

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When a Training Manager opportunity became available within Express Locations, David aggressively pursued the role and eventually earned the promotion. As a trainer, David was able to master his classroom facilitation skills and began mentoring managers and sales personnel. He also began cultivating strategic partnerships with sales leaders and operations managers to increase alignment and collaboration between business units. As Express Locations continued to grow, David accepted a challenging new assignment that involved relocating to Idaho and launching dozens of new stores in ID, WA, OR, NV, and UT.  The initiative was successful and Express Locations continued growing rapidly. 

 

Amidst this rapid growth, David began uncovering "growing pains" and new challenges that stemmed from this rapid expansion. Determined to solve these issues, David petitioned senior leadership to create a new Instructional Designer role so he could focus more fully on creating talent development (TD) solutions to address the myriad of challenges. Once approved, David began honing his instructional design skills and achieved several TD milestones for Express Locations including: implementation of their first learning management system (LMS), creation of their first web-based training (WBT), and a structured leadership development program.

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In his Instructional Design role, David moved to UT and was able to create dozens of sales enablement tools, quick reference guides, job aids, process documents, sales workshops, operations workshops, and eLearning courses. His most significant contribution during his Instructional Design role was the design and deployment of a weeklong "Manager University" or MU. The MU program became the cornerstone of all manager development training and was emulated by several other wireless dealers due to massive success of the program.

 

As Express Locations continued to grow, new challenges emerged. To meet the demands of the growing retail footprint, several trainers had been hired and they lacked cohesion. Again, David advocated for a new role to be created and earned the title Director of Training. Under David's leadership the team created standardized TD processes, templates, approaches to training, and training standards. David created a new workshop for trainers and leaders called "Presenting the Express Way." This train-the-trainer style course enhanced the facilitation skills of trainers and sales leaders. All of these enhancements led to improved consistency and performance.

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As Express Locations neared the 100 store milestone, the size of the training department had doubled and it became clear that a new approach to training was necessary to fuel the next phase of growth. David developed a plan to divide the training department into three specializations: sales, onboarding, and operations. This approach allowed for trainers to specialize in a particular skill set and more effectively impact KPIs. This also enabled the creation of several senior trainer roles, which created a defined career path within the training department. 

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Express Locations continued to grow and deliver best-in-class sales performance, NPS, and operations. The success of Express Locations garnered constant attention from other wireless dealers, private equity groups, and other entities looking to crack-the-code of the organization's monumental success. In 2017, Wireless Vision purchased Express Locations. David played a pivotal role in ensuring a smooth acquisition and integration. David remained with Wireless Vision as a Sr. Training & Development Manager for several months. During that time he helped with several TD initiatives including: LMS migration, revamp of "Leadership Academy," sales workshops, leadership development workshops, eLearning courses, and more.

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In 2018, David left Wireless Vision to help launch Bridge Locations. As the fifth employee hired, David was tasked with building out the business infrastructure that would become the foundation for all future growth. Prior to opening their first location, David worked quickly to build: a company website, SharePoint intranet, forms, tools, policies, procedures, and more. David then quickly shifted his attention to a grueling six-month training approval process and ultimately obtained authorization from Comcast to conduct all training internally. 

 

As a training department of one, David balanced facilitating all training, developing all training content, and providing support to each new location as it opened. Additionally, David continued to work with business owners, executive leaders, and front-line personnel to continually improve their approach to sales and operations. Over several months and years, David was able to repeat the success he worked so hard to obtain at Express Locations. He reduced employee onboarding time by 50%, launched an LMS, created a Manager Development program, and surpassed all new hire performance expectations. Over time, David was able to promote and hire many talented trainers to oversee day-to-day training which allowed him to focus on strategic initiatives and leader development.

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Bridge Locations was off to a promising start: store growth, sales performance, NPS, and more. All of this early success was suddenly threatened by the emergence of COVID. David quickly worked to move all training to virtual/hybrid delivery allowing for seamless execution of all training programs without sacrificing results. The changes and cost reduction even led to improved ROI. David and the other senior leaders were able to help Bridge Locations weather the storm of COVID. As a result, Bridge Locations remains the #1 Branded Partner for Comcast and continues to grow rapidly and profitably. 

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Amidst his career success, David has also worked hard on his professional development. In 2016, David earned the Certified Professional in Learning and Performance (CPLP) designation from the Association for Talent Development. He's also written several blogs and articles. His work has been featured in ATD's Handbook for Training and Talent Development. David is also an experienced podcast guest and host. David also mentors professionals from across the USA, creating career breakthroughs and superior performance. He is also a sought-after executive coach, small business strategist, consultant, key note speaker, and thought leader. 

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Due to the popularity and success of his work, David has created The Macon Method©; a series of strategies, approaches, procedures, and tactics that improve performance. These proven frameworks can be applied to any industry regardless of organization size. David has made information and training on this methodology available on this site as part of his mission to: "help people and organizations achieve their potential."

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David currently resides in northern Utah with his wife and son. His passions and hobbies include: bulldogs, smoked meats, the outdoors, film, reading, and all things Star Wars.