When I was CEO of XLHealth Corporation and “turned around” the billion dollar company so it became an attractive acquisitions target, Wall Street bankers called the achievement “spectacular” and “an overnight success.”
This applause might have made some people shake their heads, since many knew that when I graduated from Colgate, no one would even hire me!
Two decades later, however, I had reached prominence in the corporate world, leading companies with thousands of employees under my command—thanks to the Leadership lessons I learned from my parents.
As the son of a award-winning small college football coach and a fantastic mother who supported us every step of the way, they probably hoped I would follow their lead and pursue a coaching career.
Instead, I took the leadership skills they instilled and imparted them in the business world. The lessons they taught helped me understand how to build winning teams in business—helping me to advance my career, from sales to management, then to CEO positions of multi-billion dollar companies.
The key to my success was using my parent’s wisdom to improve corporate culture so employees felt they were TRULY part of a team, just as Dad and Mom had strived to improve the culture at Lehigh and Colgate, so football players had a true sense of believing in themselves. This was a critical ingredient for turning their teams from losers to winners, from also-rans to championship contenders. And I had a front-row seat to watch how this worked!
The Dunlap Rules encapsulates my parents’ story AND my story, two generations who applied the same rules in different arenas, sports and business. Looking back, the blueprint for success was due to one important thing—Building Winning Cultures. It was about creating an environment where there was trust and people cared, and at its core, this only happens with solid Leadership.
Through positions as a sales representative for Equitable Life and an executive at CIGNA, UnitedHealthcare, BWM Ventures, and XLHealth, I integrated the lessons learned while ascending to management and leadership positions. And in 2012, XLHealth was sold to UnitedHealth Group for more than $2 billion.
After leaving XLHealth, my credentials permitted me to become one of eleven founding partners of Guidon Partners, a healthcare Private Equity firm. Guidon is a respected group of senior executives from the healthcare industry whose pool of resources permits interaction with the world’s largest healthcare private equity funds, investing and working with them on leveraged buyout investments and growth equity deals. While doing so, I interact with management teams and select private equity investors, addressing problems in their operations or assisting management in finding and hiring qualified executives. Along the way, I am amazed at the number of times The Dunlap Rules come into play with both major and minor decision-making.
When I am not working on Guidon opportunities, I am an active investor in the financial markets. Being so immersed, I write and publish the Dunlap Investment Newsletter, the twice-monthly publication focusing on macro-economic trends affecting financial markets (see above). Demand for the Newsletter has been humbling and my subscribers and I have a lively interaction, discussing the ongoing evolution of our financial and political world.
When not writing books (The Dunlap Rules) and the Dunlap Investment Newsletter, and when my Guidon partners and I aren’t investing in healthcare companies, I spend time mentoring those young and old who reach out to me for guidance on business or personal matters. They may be looking for career advice, or seeking internships or grappling with college or graduate-level decisions. Or they may be looking to learn more about the investment world. Being available as a mentor to friends and family is important to me. I had the great fortune to have two great mentors with my parents, and I therefore feel obligated to pay it forward to others who can benefit from my perspectives.