CBIA BizCast: Taking a Leap of Faith

Twenty five years ago this summer, The Latimer Group CEO Dean Brenner thought he’d be in crunch time training for the Olympics in Sydney, Australia. 

He was sailing professionally and he and his wife quit their day jobs because they thought he had a shot. 

While their second place Olympic selection trial finish wasn’t the outcome they’d hoped for, it led them on a journey to starting their own business, one that today is thriving, and helping other teams achieve their goals. 

“One door closes, another door opens is the cliche,” Brenner told the CBIA BizCast. 

Brenner and his wife, Emily, built The Latimer Group around their strengths and what they believed in–the power of effective communication.

“Taking the leap of faith to start a business is a big choice,” said Brenner. “You have to know what you want to build, and if you really believe in it, you’ve got to stick with it.” 

Defining Your Business 

Today, The Latimer Group employs 15 people and works with corporations around the world to provide training and coaching to people and teams on powerful and persuasive communication skills. 

Brenner said he was the classic entrepreneurial story, winging it in the early years and trying to come up with concepts that business leaders would find valuable.

He said at the start he had a lot of requests for team building workshops, but he turned them down because he knew he wanted to focus on communications coaching. 

“One piece of advice I got was ‘the work you take early will define what work you get later.’”

The Latimer Group’s Dean Brenner

“One piece of advice I got from a dear friend was ‘the work you take early will define what work you get later.’”

Over the years, he continued to refine his expertise and that of his team until he started building all of his content around how a person can be more persuasive and drive outcomes. 

“At that point, the business really started to take off,” Brenner said.

Changing World 

Two decades later, Brenner said the pandemic threw them what may have been the biggest curveball yet. 

“I would call my wife before I left the office and tell her to meet me in the driveway so my kids wouldn’t see me crying,” Brenner said. 

He had gone from feeling great about his company and what he had built to not being able to visualize surviving. 

“Even when things are really good, I don’t know that I’ll ever be truly comfortable again.”

Brenner

“I think business owners and leaders probably share some scar tissue around that,” Brenner explained. 

“Even when things are really good, I don’t know that I’ll ever be truly comfortable again because what the early days of COVID taught us is how quickly the world can change.”

But like many other resilient business owners, his team rolled up their sleeves, reinvented their service offerings to virtual platforms, and grew the business to the largest it had ever been.

Pillars for Success 

Brenner is grateful for his team that has helped to build his business. 

He teaches his team as they teach others—to have strong communication skills, good meeting cultures, and an effective decision making framework. 

“All of those things, communication skills, meeting culture and decision making frameworks really are the three legs of the stool upon which healthy information flow rests,” said Brenner. 

“You have to have a lot of people around you that are going to help you maintain that faith.”

Brenner

While he spends a lot of time helping large corporations, Brenner said he also likes to support new entrepreneurs on their individual journeys. 

“You have to have a lot of faith, and you have to have a lot of people around you that are going to help you maintain that faith,” Brenner said. 

“I try to do that for others now, because a lot of people have done it for me.”

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