Running a business of any kind involves the need to navigate work relationships and there’s no denying that relationships of any kind take strain from time to time. That’s why it’s incredibly important to be able to resolve workplace conflicts and build teams that don’t just tolerate each other, but that work as a cohesive unit with healthy communication. 

Dennis Humphrey is the co-founder of Eden Business Concepts and they aim to help other businesses thrive through mending work relationships and building a sense of community in the workplace. Our own Courtney Botha sat down with Dennis to chat about what led him and his business partner to become the business conflict managers that every enterprise needs.

What are three things  every entrepreneur should know?

Dennis believes it is crucial for every leader – and thus entrepreneur – to understand themselves. Being able to recognize and understand the decisions they make: why they make them as well as what motivates those decisions is a critical aspect of strategic planning when running a business. 

He further explained that a person’s ability to understand themselves directly relates to whether they will flounder or flourish in their important relationships. This is because how well a person understands their own heart, desires, needs, weaknesses, and everything else that makes them who they are – that motivates them to do what they do – has a massive impact on their relationships and how they go about running their business. 

As important as it is to meet your targets and goals in practice, your motivations and the “why” behind each action and decision is incredibly important for the overall strategy of your business. Dennis brought our attention to the question: “when do you take a step back from working in the business and start to work on the business?” 

That’s a perspective shift that is important for entrepreneurs to focus on consistently.

What problem does your business solve and who are its customers?

Dennis worked extensively with his business partner, John Erickson, on team building, leadership development, and organizational projects in the higher education, nonprofit, and international non-profit sectors during their thirty years of friendship. 

Being specialists in that field led them to co-found Eden Business Concepts together. The main problem that their business tackles is conflict resolution, along with strategic advising and team optimization.

Dennis and John are both really adept at conflicting crisis management. Essentially, they’ll come in and assess the work environment to get a sense of what needs to be done to settle things down. They also spend some time working on development of work leadership, team development work, and strategic advising, but their sweet spot so to speak is crisis management.

Dennis and his business partner enjoy building friendships and curating a life-giving relationship with the organizations they work with. 

They tend to work well with small to mid-sized enterprises that are either family businesses or closely owned businesses and are often industry agnostic. They appreciate entering spaces where there are anywhere from 15 to 250 staff, where the annual income is between $150 million and $250 million. Because those are the areas where businesses are expanding and they are needing to start involving new individuals in policy decisions, that is the area where they find themselves to be most effective.

What inspired you to become an entrepreneur and would you do it again?

Interestingly, Dennis had always operated from an entrepreneurial way of working, starting out in clinical mental health before transitioning into the outplacement industry. He mainly did career development in this industry which led him to doing a lot of executive coaching which later evolved into a firm that catered strictly to see suite individuals. 

Dennis explained that this naturally helped him develop the knowledge and the experience with client coaching and development training. About five years ago, a gentleman came to them, knowing what they were doing in a non-profit space and with an appreciation for their models and materials. 

He was the one that impressed the need to flip their business over into the for-profit, corporate side of things and so that’s what they did. They flipped into the remote corporate environment rather than the nonprofit or higher ED space.

If someone had given you a million dollars when you first started your business, what would you have spent it on?

It took some time for Dennis to ideate a response to the million dollar question – as most people tend to. Although he sees the value in and really enjoys service consulting, Dennis would have used the million dollars to start a traditional business that creates a tangible product.

What is your proudest accomplishment as an Entrepreneur?

For Dennis, the proudest accomplishment comes not just individually. He finds the most pride and fulfillment when they go into a company that’s an absolute dumpster fire of conflict and simply do what they do best – put the fire out. 

Then, when they leave the business, not only have they helped to figure out and address the conflict, but they’ve also helped them work out the best way to work together. He finds pride when they walk into a place of conflict and walk out having turned it into a community. Dennis goes on to say that that’s their heart. They want people to go into their place of work and thrive and have a life-giving experience rather than a draining one.

What big goals are you looking to achieve?

Dennis has some significant goals on the horizon that he’s looking to achieve, one of which is a project that involves proprietary items used in leadership development. Over the course of 30 years, these items have been validated and proven to be effective. Dennis aims to enhance the credibility and marketability of these items by implementing quantitative instruments this year. 

This endeavor represents a crucial step towards advancing the maturity and viability of this substantial undertaking.

Throughout this series, we’re loving that there are some common themes threading all of these stories together while each entrepreneur has their own unique path to success. Some people start out fully entrenched in the stable 9-5 life, while others begin as entrepreneurs and pivot to an industry more suited to their own definition of success. 

How did your journey to entrepreneurial success begin? What have you learned along the way? Where do you dream of taking your business in future? We’d love to hear from you! Connect with us today to share your own Entrepreneur Story.