Featured Customer – Alan Davis

Perhaps he should have known retirement wouldn’t be for him. Hindsight is always 20-20, but hobbies like deep-sea diving and sailboat racing were a dead giveaway. Even so Alan Davis and his wife, Bonnie, loved the idea of a simpler life.

Waving goodbye to their fast-paced days in Silicon Valley, they moved to San Juan Island. In this quiet boaters paradise, locking your front door was optional and doggie play dates consumed the calendar. It seemed ideal.

“What I discovered,” Alan explained, “was that a simpler life is really boring.” We were sitting in his office, located just blocks from Lake Union.

Formerly he’d been the General Manager of the Software Distribution and Support Operation at Intel and the Director of Worldwide Marketing for Intel’s Microprocessor Division.

While he’d fully embraced (and still does) the San Juans as home, Alan needed more. He was ready to go back to work. And he jumped in feet first.

For Alan, feet first jumping seems to be the norm. When he met Bonnie nearly 50 years ago, they were married within eight weeks. “I tell women that and they say, ‘Wow! You knew right away.’ I tell men that same thing and they say, ‘Wow! You’re darn lucky,’” he told me.

I agree with the women. Why? Because Alan has an incredible intuition and the brains to match. After all, he married a woman whose love of boating, animals and eating shellfish matches his own.

So when a venture capitalist friend of his mentioned a company in trouble and asked if Alan if he wanted to help, he said yes – immediately.

Within days, Alan went to visit. The company was on the verge of bankruptcy. “I called my wife and told her I’d be back in two or three weeks. Eighteen months later, I finally made it home. The company was on NASDAQ,” he said.

That’s how he started in the consulting business – by jumping right in. “I did that first one. And then the phone rang and I did another. And then another,” he told me.

The phone hasn’t quit ringing. Today, he’s a management consultant at Revitalization Partners. He and his colleagues have helped countless companies throughout the world overcome difficulties. Their problem solving approach gives companies the opportunity to pull up their bootstraps, keep their doors open and their employees working.

Life is no longer boring. Splitting his time between the island and mainland lets Alan fully enjoy the “simple” life with Bonnie. “We have two dogs, three cats and two parrots. They keep us pretty busy,” he said.

Alan, it’s a pleasure to help you travel between the best of both worlds.