Dennis Geelen

Coaching and mentoring to help you start and scale your one-person business.

Founder

Zero In

The mission of Zero In is to help as many businesses and leaders build a brand customers love and a company people are passionate to work for.  

So where do you need to focus (or Zero In)?
Solve the problem of INDIFFERENCE!

Indifferent customers have no compelling reason to purchase your product or service rather than your competitors' product or service. 

Indifferent employees are complacent because they are not passionate about coming to work each day.

Utilize the resources, books, and courses from Zero In to increase your customer retention, improve your customer experience, and build a passionate culture of innovation giving your team the ability to find new and better ways to serve your customers.

"Customers DO NOT buy your product or service, they buy what it can DO FOR THEM"
Customer-centricity means knowing your customers and giving them what they crave.  This helps you to build trust and loyalty, but also a solid reputation.  Loyal customers become fans of your brand and refer other customers to you.

"If you don't find new and better ways to serve your customers, SOMEONE ELSE WILL!"
Being Innovative brings new ideas, which is crucial to a business being able to find new and better ways to add value for your customers.  With innovation comes creative new products and services, increases in efficiency and, as a result, improved profitability.

BE THE BRAND CUSTOMERS LOVE AND THE COMPANY PEOPLE ARE PASSIONATE TO WORK FOR

Founder and Chief Difference Maker

The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group

About the Commonwell
We are committed to profitable growth, team development, ingenuity, while having fun at work.  We offer a complete range of insurance products including residential, automobile, commercial, farm and watercraft. We encourage a work-life balance and we are serious about what we do!

About my Role
As Manager of the PMO, I lead a group project managers and business analysts to implement the project management office from the ground up.

About the PMO
Projects at the Commonwell are measured against timelines, budget, delivery of scope, but most importantly the realization of the intended benefits of each project.  Over 85% of projects at the Commonwell were consistantly green throughout 2018.

Manager, Project and Portfolio Management Office

As Manager of Application Services, I am responsible for planning, coordinating and managing the activities of the Application Services team within the Information Systems (IS) Department. This includes leadership and development of the IS team members, as well as providing direction and support for IS solutions to meet the present and future needs of the organization.

Manager of Application Services

Kawartha Lakes Food Source

Kawartha Lakes Food Source is a community effort to reduce hunger in the City of Kawartha Lakes by:

1. Maintaining a central warehouse to supply food to organizations that provide food to individuals in need,
2. Raising public awareness, and
3. Working in concert with other local not-for-profit organizations.

Board Of Directors

Operitel Corporation (An OpenText Company) 

ABout OpenText
OpenText, The Information Company™, a market leader in Enterprise Information Management software and solutions, enables intelligent and connected enterprises by managing, leveraging, securing and gaining insight into enterprise information, on-premises or in the cloud. 

About my Role
Directed a team of PS and R&D resources to develop and implement the LearnFlex LMS platform for over 40 clients.

Director of R&D and Professional Services

TELUS

Manager - Payment Solutions Development and Support

Emergis - A Telus Company

Manager

Emergis Inc

Business Coach | Keynote Speaker | Author of The Happy Accidents newsletter and The Accidental Solopreneur book

What I Do
I help teams, organizations, and solopreneurs flourish by focusing on what really matters: people.

As a speaker, author, and consultant, I equip audiences with practical, human-centered strategies to thrive in uncertain times, build meaningful businesses, and create lasting impact.

Who I Work With
• Event organizers seeking keynote speakers on serendipity, growth, and personal transformation
• Businesses and nonprofits looking to create stronger cultures, customer experiences, and leadership teams
• Solopreneurs who want to design businesses that give them both income and freedom


What I’ve Created
• Author of The Zero In Formula and The Accidental Solopreneur (bestseller)
• Creator of top-rated online courses for solopreneurs and authors
• Host of the Happy Accidents podcast and newsletter
• Keynote talks including 'The Power of Serendipity', 'Start Before You’re Ready', and 'Rooted in Humans'


Want to Work Together?
Let’s talk if you’re looking for:
✅ A keynote speaker for your next event
✅ A workshop or webinar for your team
✅ A course to help you grow as a solopreneur or author


DM me if you’d like to connect about speaking, workshops, or collaborations.

Parikh Ventures LLC

Aligned and improved clients' (ranging from Amazon, Walmart, Chewy) day to day operational effectiveness to achieve their long term strategic goals. Analyzed current challenges at hand, identified trends & opportunities for growth, and designed strategies that aligned with and ensured operations are optimized to meet strategic objectives.

●	Implemented operational improvements for 50+ managers with strategies that ranged in best practices for frontline leadership to up C-Suite leadership.

●      Improved team engagement by over 50% in 1 month through insights gained from implementing and monitoring weekly data that drove strategic approaches.

●      Drove cross functional alignment across departments and operational improvements that led to the business being top 1% in their district.

●	Turned around an org that was missing SLAs to achieving 100% of KPI metrics.

Strategy & Operations Consultant

XPO Logistics, Inc.

Directly managed a team of 40+ employee, 6 exempt managers, and 6 nonexempt leaders. Collaborated with global cross functional teams to design and execute a strategy to implement a new Warehouse Management System across the entire Healthcare enterprise. Tracked and presented weekly progress to the President of Supply Chain and conducted quarterly business reviews with executive leadership and client. Drove process improvement for day to day operational excellence in order to achieve long term strategic objectives.

●	Efficiently developed and managed operations, policies, and processes to optimize and improve KPIs by 50%. 

●	Effectively reorganized segmentation strategy for facility with 78,000 SKUs and record count strategy to achieve 100% cycle count completion in 3 months to pass 2 audits.

●	Designed and implemented customized reports to monitor KPIs for feedback and analysis for the newly implemented WMS.

●	Led the process mapping, documentation, creation of SOPs, and training for implementation of new WMS.

●	Scheduled and rolled out hardware deployment and training for 250+ employees on new WMS and processes.

General Manager

Iron Mountain

Directly managed a team of 80+ employees, 3 exempt managers, and 5 nonexempt leaders. Drove cross functional initiatives and operational alignment at an organizational level. Partnered with Product, Marketing, Strategy, Sales, and CX to grow from 4 markets to 31 markets post joint venture. Partnered with Product and IT to develop a knowledge database for all teams. 

●	Partnered with Director of Quality to develop 12 new KPIs, design and monitor dashboards to monitor performance, capture feedback, and personalize KPIs based on market specific relevance. 

●	Drove significant annual savings (over $300K or 85% YoY) in concessions from quality defects through improved handling processes, successful delivery, and inventory accuracy all within 98-99%. 

●	Established inventory categorization strategy for oversized freight and loose stowing items which helped increase storage utilization by 36%.

●	Mentored and developed 2 direct reports into leadership and management level roles.

Senior Operations Manager

MakeSpace

Directly managed a team of 60+ employees, 2 exempt managers, and 4 nonexempt leaders. Led programs with cross functional teams to improve processes, products, and strategy. Collaborated with executive leadership to develop documentation, training, implementation, and standardization for all aspects of Operations. Oversaw $12MM P&L for NY and NJ markets. 

●	Partnered with the Product team to develop 2 apps and a WMS website that played a key role in joint venture.

●	Increased productivity 400% (from 30 UPH to 120 UPH) and drove significant annual savings (over $500K YoY) to come ahead of target goal through headcount restructuring, streamlining processes and improving quality defects.

●	Oversaw and executed project to insource operations and eliminate 3PL inefficiencies. Expanded 75k sq ft to over 500k sq ft. This added 2MM cu ft of physical storage space and increased daily capacity by 50%. 

●	Saved company $600k through the implementation of a zoning strategy for field team that improved lean practices by eliminating travel time, idle labor, and disruptive delinquencies.

●	Created and implemented a demand planning product to assist in forecasting workload and headcount scheduling.

●	Mentored and developed 3 direct reports into leadership and management level roles.

Amazon

Directly managed a team of 500+ employees, 3 exempt managers, and 10 nonexempt leaders in a 1.1MM sq ft facility. Drove operational efficiencies through optimizing processes, systems, and cross functional collaboration with teams in order to achieve long term strategic goals. .

●	Drove initiative for defect injection reduction that collaborated with UI/UX teams, product teams, and senior leadership which led to process improvements and reducing quality defect by 73% year over year.

●	Designed project to reconfigure 6 floors of 1.1 sq ft facility for 8000+ associates which led to an increased 23,000 cu ft of storage, 80% productivity YoY, 66% safety incidents YoY, and 70% quality YoY.

●	Designed, documented, and implemented onboarding and training program for new hires reducing learning curve by 75%, from 4 weeks to 1 week to hit KPI goal. Program was adopted region wide.

●	Mentored and developed 12 direct reports into leadership and management level roles

Operations Manager

Area Manager II

Area Manager

I help first time managers in Ops 🦺 close the gap from a lack of training and support.

Professionally:

10 years of experience leading teams to drive operational improvements by designing and implementing frameworks, processes, and systems at startups and enterprise companies like Amazon, XPO Logistics, and Iron Mountain. Skilled in collaborating with cross functional teams to drive alignment, coordination, and execution on initiatives with stakeholders. Proven track record of designing data-driven and scalable processes, streamlining bottlenecks, and developing KPIs to monitor data for actionable insights. Drove efficiencies that led to operational increases of over 80%, proprietary product development, WMS implementation, 7x market growth to scale nationwide, and a successful joint venture.

𝐒𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐬: Operations Management, Operational Excellence, E-commerce, Management, Leadership, Coaching & Mentoring, Cross-functional Leadership, Collaboration & Coordination, Interpersonal Skills, Stakeholder Management, Process Improvement, Continuous Improvement, Strategic Planning, Program/Project Management, Product Operations, Communications, Data Analysis, OKRs / KPIs, Problem Solving, P&L Management

𝐓𝐨𝐨𝐥𝐬: MS Office Suite, Google Suite, Looker, Asana, Slack, MS Teams, Trello, Sharepoint, Notion, Canva, Calendly, Zoom, Active Campaign, Dropbox

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Personally: 

I've been lucky enough to live on both coasts (NJ and Cali) but I'll always be a Jersey guy at heart. I enjoy photography (have even done friends' weddings) and video games (huge Zelda fan). Oh and I'm a foodie - I can out eat my wallet which can be a problem.

Let's connect!

taplio

The Battle

Dennis Geelen

Pathik Parikh

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