10 minute read
Once Adrift and Alone, Everett Man Found His North Star in Life, Business and Community
By John Stearns
One could draw an analogy between Bryan Dennis’s boat repair and service business in Everett, Washington, and what he did to turn his life around.
“You can take something that was broken and make it whole again, and it’s a cathartic release to see that,” Dennis said of viewing the tangible results of hull repairs, engine overhauls or countless other repair and service jobs done by his company, Puget Sound Composites, also known as PSC Marine.
It was only eight years ago, in 2017, that Dennis was broken himself, adrift with literally nothing other than the clothes on his back and the few things he could carry in a gym bag. He was at the deepest point of a drug addiction that estranged him from friends and family, and nearly cost him his life—twice.
He credits God for his redirection.
Realizing he would be forgiven, he mustered the resolve to turn his life around. First, he got clean, then found employment. He began to save money and opened a secured checking account at Heritage Bank to begin rebuilding his financial life, too. He eventually landed a job at an Everett boat-repair facility that would open the doors to business ownership.
Today, when he looks at his reflection in a fiberglass hull he has refinished to a smooth, mirror-like finish, he takes pride in what he sees. The work is a bit like being a sculptor, he said of rebuilding the structure, matching the color and then meticulously applying the paint.
“It’s like a puzzle when you can restore it and look at yourself, and you’re facing that surface that you’ve just done. It’s kind of like what God did in my life,” he said. “And now that I feel like I restored my image the way God sees me, or I see myself, I kind of focus on the guys that I’ve got working with me. My vision for the future is to help people do that in their own lives.”
His immediate focus is PSC Marine and its customers, continuing to fine-tune and build a business that he launched four years ago and now has 10 employees. The shop’s work on pleasure and commercial crafts includes service and repair for composite, fiberglass, aluminum, wood and steel hulls; painting; detailing and finishing; welding, repair and fabrication of aluminum, stainless steel and steel; brightwork; rigging; electrical; and myriad mechanical repairs and services. PSC works on everything from six-foot dinghies to 110-foot vessels.
Dennis is building his business on core fundamentals of honesty and integrity—doing things right, not cutting corners. That applies to the physical work on boats and interactions with customers, and it applies to the back-of-the-house work of running a business by the book. Operating PSC Marine that way provides a rock-solid foundation that’s sustainable, he said.
“Really, the vision I have is to get the business sustainable so that we can have enough bandwidth to focus as much as possible on people,” Dennis said.
That means being there for his employees, but he also wants others to know that God is there for them, too, that there’s hope. He believes feelings of hopelessness are pervasive in society today, from addictions, relationship struggles, gambling problems, business pressures and more.
“The feeling inside that I had of hopelessness, I think is the same whether you’re a homeless, indigent drug addict or you are maybe a chief executive of a [company] and you feel like you’re about to lose your job, or you’re failing your stockholders and you’re thinking about taking your life,” he said. “The internal feeling is the same, and even though the contexts are different, the solution is the same, too.”
HIS STORY IS ‘AMAZING’
PSC Marine’s banker at Heritage, Staci Lindstrand, said Dennis’s story is one reason she got into community banking. “To overcome what he did to be where he is today is amazing and he is so completely humble; it is kind of inspiring, to be honest,” said Lindstrand, vice president and branch manager of the Everett office. “I think his perseverance, his commitment, not only to himself but to the company that he built is amazing. And to be able to watch that growth as a banker is one of the most rewarding things for me. It’s why I’m in community banking is building those relationships and watching people grow.”
Lindstrand said it has been an honor for her to watch Dennis’s journey and see the success that he’s had.
“Honestly, it is truly just one of those once-in-a-lifetime stories where you connect with a business owner who just surprises you at every turn with their commitment and ability to overcome any obstacle that comes their way and remain positive and humble,” she said. “It’s amazing.”
Dennis started banking with Heritage in mid-2018, going there to cash his paychecks from a grocery store where he worked after treatment. Heritage offered him a secured checking account with overdraft protection and a chance to rebuild his credit.
Dennis, 39, traces his plunge into addiction to opioids after a teenage wisdom teeth extraction about 2004. The opioid pain relief medication seemed to reduce stress, fears and anxieties he felt at that age, despite his good grades, athletics and other activities. He had a full-ride scholarship to attend college, which added more pressure. He continued taking opioids for several years to feel better about himself, a trend that took over his reasoning as he sought more pills to have the same effects. Eventually, he tried different drugs and the downward spiral intensified. By the end, he had done every drug in every way, from cocaine in Columbia to heroin on the streets of Everett. He was revived twice from near-death overdoses.
“I didn’t have any shoes on my feet and was walking around in psychosis,” he said, the pain of the memory evident in his voice. “I weighed 110 pounds; I had forgotten who I was, who my family was. I didn’t really have any identity anymore.”
In the pit of despair in 2017, walking a road in Everett, he approached law enforcement officers, admitted his addiction, that he had drugs in his possession and had stolen food to eat. They offered to help, including making appointments with doctors, buying him glasses to replace the ones he had lost, giving him gift cards for fast food joints and arranging lodging. They then got him to an inpatient facility, helped find transitional housing, then a job at a corner grocery store a couple blocks from his housing, where his mattress on the floor had a spring protruding from it. He mowed a nearby lawn in return for a bicycle to commute to drug-counseling sessions.
He began redirecting his path. He likened his previous life in drugs to a ship completely off-course, its compass at 180 degrees south. He started shifting his direction one degree at a time until his internal compass eventually swung 180 degrees and locked on his true north.
He saved whatever money he could, got plugged into a local church, raised enough money for a car, then landed a job at the Port of Everett, where he worked for a marine repair shop. He sought work there because he had a love of water and knack for boat maintenance and rebuilds that he learned as a youth with his boat-owning stepfather.
Working in the marine repair shop, he continued to save, grow and learn. He connected with customers who appreciated his work, including many who were successful business owners. He envisioned himself opening his own marine business someday. When the shop owner he worked for exited the business for health reasons, the door opened for Dennis’s dream. While he didn’t buy the business, he assumed its lease in the port and in 2021 began Puget Sound Composites from scratch, winning customers for whom he had already worked while adding new ones.
Customers with their own businesses offered advice along his entrepreneurial journey. Heritage, too, offered counsel and the financial instruments to assist his navigation.
“They helped me to save and counseled me and encouraged me,” Dennis said, complimenting Lindstrand and others in the branch for their attention. “It’s kind of become like a family,” he said. “They’re people that I trust, and they’ve come down and looked at my operation; it’s been really fun giving them tours.”
Today, he has several Heritage accounts: business savings, credit lines and credit cards.
“They were instrumental in helping me rebuild my credit as fast as possible,” Dennis said. He was able to buy a house, his business is debt free and he pays off his credit cards monthly.
“I think Heritage was the only bank that was willing to give me a chance,” Dennis said. “That was what made the biggest difference for me. I think they’ve got a very competent, experienced staff; they answer the phone when you call; they are represented well in the region with locations and with ATMs; and they’re also very reasonable in their fees, just the structure of their accounts.”
Lindstrand said the bank has something akin to a “second-chance product” for people who’ve had previous banking issues, and Dennis made the most of his opportunity.
“I wish that you could bottle up that positivity and perseverance,” she said, “and I just think he could be such an encouragement to so many other people, but he has always been just kind and humble and wanting to do the right thing and the best thing, and I think it’s taken him really far.”
Added Lindstrand, “We want the best for our clients, regardless of how they came to us. So, I think if I’ve learned anything from Bryan, it’s that if you don’t give up on yourself, no one else can take you down.”
She’s excited to watch Dennis’s journey, calling him strategic and measured with his growing business.
“I think if he continues on this path, there’s just no limit to what we’re going to see from him,” Lindstrand said.
Giving Back
Dennis is in a good place mentally, physically and spiritually. That includes being newly married; he and Shannon, a teacher at a private Christian school, wed in March 2024.
With his life solidly on course, he’s rewarded now by helping others, whether his PSC staff, tithing at his church, donating to the Sea Scouts, giving vehicles to single mothers or walking the streets of Everett to encourage people whose plight he understands.
Dennis was among 39 volunteer members of the Mayor’s Drug Crisis Task Force that was convened in February 2024
Everett Mayor Cassie Franklin to address the city’s drug problem. A city report on the task force’s work says, “Over the course of four months, the task force developed a shared understanding of the local drug crisis and its effects on community safety, culminating in actionable recommendations that encompass short-term interventions and long-term solutions aimed at mitigating the crisis and enhancing public safety. The final recommendations aim to improve public safety and support the City’s most vulnerable populations, ensuring a safer and healthier Everett for all residents.”
Dennis—living proof that support and services can have dramatic turnaround effects—wants to bring hope and help to others who are struggling. He knows the pain his drug addiction caused his friends and family in the past as they tried to help, but whom he drove away, leaving him to feel the full consequences of his poor decisions.
“When I was finally alone, I think that’s when I developed a relationship with God, because there wasn’t anybody else,” he said, adding that all his relationships have since returned to levels higher than they ever were. “But still, that primary hope that I have is not in my family, or my popularity, or my friends, or the wealth I now have. It’s in God.”
