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Growing up in upstate New York, David Dussault was one of seven kids living in a three-bedroom home. His father was a factory worker, his mother didn’t work outside the home, and their family was quite poor. But what David’s family lacked in material goods, they made up for in strong relationships, great values, and genuine love. His father was home every night for dinner, and his parents took great care to instill strong moral character in their children.
“We were always working,” recalls David. “My father taught us the value of hard work and integrity, and he made sure that we outworked everyone we were working next to. We had those values built into us from an early age.”
Throughout his childhood, David developed into a person of action. His upbringing required that he worked, and David began to understand that he would have to earn his living. He started his own lawn-mowing company at age 13, he bagged groceries at the market, and he hauled stone for a local contractor. Even when he wanted to quit, his family wouldn’t stand for it. For David, working as the lowest man on the totem pole in several jobs sowed the seeds of integrity and respect that would be the foundation for his future endeavors.
“I’ll never forget the first day I came home and wanted to quit,” says David. “I worked harder that summer than I had ever worked in my life, for very little money. I really do believe that having to work for everything we had shaped my work ethic, my integrity, and my ability to become a leader and do something significant.”
Accordingly, David progressed through school as a high achiever. He got into Union College — a private, highly-selective liberal arts school — after three rounds of applying, being rejected, and trying again. Despite his outward confidence, David arrived at college with a natural insecurity. After growing up poor, he was now surrounded by peers who, by and large, didn’t know the kind of hard work that had defined his childhood. He worried that he inherently possessed less potential than his wealthy peers, and as he worked his way through college, he struggled with his own self-worth. The insecurity persisted until his junior year in college, when an experience with his roommates made him reconsider his leadership abilities.
“I had three roommates who were all from very affluent backgrounds,” recalls David. “When we moved in together, I was the one negotiating our lease, collecting rent, managing utilities, and working with the landlord. One of my roommates noticed and said, ‘Maybe one day you can be like us, and not have to work so hard.’”
It was a wake-up call. The comment prompted David to step back and take stock of how naturally leadership came to him, despite his socioeconomic standing within the group. Not only had he taken responsibility and accountability for their housing, he preferred being the person in charge. The values ingrained in him as a child paved the way for his natural leadership to take root, and David was inspired to pursue more opportunities.
“I realized that servant leaders are highly-effective leaders, and I began to see a path for myself,” says David. “I wanted to invest in my growth as a leader, and that parlayed into me applying for an internship at GE. Fast forward five years, I was running a billion-dollar plant with 300 employees reporting to me.”
Though David was rising quickly at GE, he had a burning passion to start a business of his own. He felt he could marry his entrepreneurial streak with his familial roots to build something special. Dating back to 1908, David’s family heritage and background had been in manufacturing. Though the work would be harder and more uncertain, he knew it would be more rewarding and meaningful to follow in the footsteps of the men in his family.
“My family experiences helped shape me as a leader to respect and honor everybody regardless of their position in life,” says David. “One of my mentors at GE said that he’d never met a young man who could talk to the janitor with such respect and integrity, then turn around and pitch the VP of the company in the same breath.”
Not only did David want to get into manufacturing, he wanted to revitalize it. While we don’t often think of American manufacturing and entrepreneurship in the same sentence, David had a vision for getting the next generation excited about manufacturing and building a platform for them to have a thriving and profitable career in the industry. David had the idea that investing in state-of-the-art technologies would spur new innovation and make America highly competitive against global manufacturers. In 2006, David founded P1 Industries in his hometown of Schenectady, New York.
“Back in the day, Schenectady was a major center for manufacturing,” says David. “Manufacturing has this traditional illustration in people’s minds of dirt floors, lights hanging from the ceiling; kind of an archaic industry that had its glory days in the United States during the Industrial Revolution to post-World War II.”
But David envisioned a new future for American manufacturing, and he set out to build a company that would infuse manufacturing with the excitement of entrepreneurship. Their approach was risky yet strategic: P1 would take the long-view by investing in millennials and new technologies, like thermal and hydro-generation manufacturing. David started small and focused on finding the right people, achieving world-class production, and delivering excellent service. As they grew, he repeatedly turned down offers from private equity investors. David was singularly focused on doing whatever it would take to realize his vision.
“When you take a long-term approach, you have to forgo short-term and near-term profitability and productivity in order to get to that future position. We’ve been very successful in building that kind of workforce,” says David. “We’ve put incentives and structure in place inside the company to reinforce our values and the type of people we want to hire.”
His plan was working, and the company grew fast and furiously. At the same time, there were red flags that the culture wasn’t keeping up with company growth; productivity began to decline and competition broke out among teams. By 2013, David knew he had to make a change, and he decided to deepen his commitment to purpose-driven leadership. His dream of building a capital-intensive, manufacturing conglomerate was replaced by a commitment to becoming a Small Giant — instead of building something big, he wanted something great.
“I wanted to be the best CEO I could, and I wanted to build the healthiest, most vibrant, values-driven business community we could imagine,” says David. “We needed a clear vision, rock-solid values, and high levels of transparency and simplicity in our organizational structure.”
Over the course of two years, P1 Industries underwent a significant cultural shift. They did the work of identifying the tenets of their company vision, architecting and blueprinting a values-driven business model. David bought out minority shareholders who weren’t aligned with the new vision for the company. They conducted a small downsizing of their workforce to prune and reduce those who weren’t a strong culture fit. Finally, they rolled out open-book management and put the entire company through a financial literacy program.
By June of 2016, the new culture was starting to coalesce, and they had the business results to prove it. They celebrated the best month, best quarter, and best first-half in company history. Their workforce, with an average age of 27, was generating an average revenue of $400,000 apiece in 2015, more than three times the industry average. Even better, their Millennial employees were sticking around — only three people left the company in 10 years. And in 2017, P1 Industries was named one of Forbes Small Giants: America’s Best Small Companies.
Growing up the son of a factory worker, David’s childhood experiences influenced the company he has today. David’s father was laid off several times, prompting the family to move four times throughout David’s formative years. The instability took a toll on their entire family, and it inspired one of David’s key life philosophies. Now that he’s the one at the helm, he’s trying to create a sense of stability and family in manufacturing that perhaps wasn’t there when his father was in the industry. There have been two slowdowns in P1’s company history, and both times David has reduced his pay to zero in order to preserve the livelihood and careers of his workforce.
“Because of the emotional experiences I had as a child, I’ll always sacrifice first, before I’m willing to eliminate a job or take away someone’s ability to earn,” says David. “We’re taking the approach of building community, building a family, versus just building a profit-driven enterprise.”
To hear more of David’s story and interviews with other purpose-driven leaders, tune into my Growing with Purpose podcast.
