We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nick Dinges a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Nick, appreciate you joining us today. One thing we always find fascinating is how differently entrepreneurs think about revenue growth and cost reductions – both can be powerful ways to improve profitability. What do you spend more of your time and energy on?
I’m a wild proponent of growing revenue….growing revenue solves most cash flow problems when you sell at margin.
Take advantage of market opportunities to grow revenue and/or geography, you can always come back to focusing on cutting costs and the bottom line as the business matures.
DFC is in a “hyper-growth” mode looking for any opportunity to expand our footprint, as we focus on growth we have to make strategic investments in human capital, technology or process oftentimes well in advance of earning a return.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
My work ethic and entrepreneurial spirit started at the age of 10, when I began mowing yards in my hometown of Sublette, Illinois. Over the next 12 years, I developed a respected lawn care business servicing 76 accounts in Sublette, Amboy and Woodhaven Lakes (the World’s Largest Campground). This experience allowed me to completely pay for college and graduate Western Illinois University debt free.
At the age of 22, I was hired as a Professional Firefighter/Paramedic for the City of Rockford, Illinois. This was the best job in the world (bar-none) and I was assigned to some of the busiest Engine, Ladder and Ambulance companies in the Midwest including: Rockford E-1, E-2, Ladder-2 and Charlie-27 and enjoyed 20+ run days and many multi-fire shifts.
During the same period, I was given the opportunity to be part of the newly founded Illinois Fire Store and partnered in the business shortly after my 23rd Birthday. I truly enjoyed selling Fire, EMS and Rescue Equipment and we rapidly grew out of a small home office and into a one-room office in Amboy, Illinois. Over the next several years, I moved into the role as Vice-President of Sales and managed growth of our organization into one of the premiere Fire Equipment Distributors in the Midwest.
In 2011, I became the CEO/Owner and began to carry out my vision of the business as Dinges Fire Company. Over the past 12 years, our organization has experienced rapid growth through 3-Acquisitions in Wisconsin (Safety First, LLC), Michigan (Time Emergency Equipment), Iowa (Fox Apparatus Repair) and had record sales in 2022 through a tremendous staff of 30-Full Time Staff and 90-Independent Sales Professionals serving Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Missouri, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska.
Over the past 20 years, I have also been blessed to help launch several successful international companies and product lines including: Leatherhead Fire Tools, Vanguard Safety Wear, and Leatherhead Metals.
*Started 6 Companies
*Acquired 3 Companies
*Currently own 1 Trademarked Product
www.DingesFire.com
www.LeatherheadMetals.com
www.VanguardSafetyWear.com
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
In 2011, I was 32 years old and purchased DFC from my partners, which was debt-ridden and we couldn’t meet our financial obilgations. I was given two options – either take bankruptcy or personally negoiate and guarantee payment to our vendors and the bank.
This was a scary time in my life because I had left the security of my full-time job as a career Firefighter/Paramedic in Rockford, Illinois and took the leap into the entire business resting on my shoulders. Early into the buyout, I was finding out that many of our vendors had not been receiving payments from our accounting team and quickly had to figure out how to stop the cash flow bleed, restructure debt and live very lean both personally and professionally.
At this time, I was working 18+ hours per day, trying to sell products during the day and doing the back office work late at night and on the weekends….oftentimes sleeping under my desk.
I developed a plan to implement “50 Changes in 50 Days” and kept this on a whiteboard behind my desk. Each day, I had a goal to power through one small incremental goal on this list…..which proved later on to change our company forever.
We also were faced with several difficult decisions including reducing our staff from 11 full time employees to 5 and from 12 part time contractors down to 6.
At the time, this was very unpopular, but necessary….and made for some uncomfortable times at both church and in our community.
Personally, I had to cash out my Fire Department Retirement and use that as the cash flow to keep the business afloat.
I’m very thankful to my wife, my uncle Larry Chaon and my family for having faith in me during this difficult time.
You learn alot about yourself and your resolve when faced with gut wrenching decisions and overcoming monumental challenges.
Have you ever had to pivot?
In 2019, DFC developed some game-changing software set us up for a platform of scalability. In 2020, the Covid-19 Pandemic hit and shut the world down, which was initially very problematic since 90% of our business of selling fire trucks, firefighter gear, rescue tools, thermal imaging, etc….needs to be done face to face, which was no longer possible.
Quickly, we began sourcing masks, gowns, and hand sanitizer from all over the world to supply local hospitals and businesses to keep them up and running.
Our team, coupled with this technology worked day and night making sure that our team had products to sell and that no one missed a paycheck in 2020….. it also provided for some neat stories supplying organizations such as: the Chicago Bears, Cook County (Chicago, IL), Koh’s Department Stores, Polaris and others with critical supplies they needed to stay in business.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.dingesfire.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dingesfirecompany/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dingesfire
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dinges-fire-company/?viewAsMember=true