Learning From Leaders

Rolling With It

An acoustical engineering degree and a chance meeting set Steve Witt’s serendipitous career in perpetual motion.

WORDS BY JAMIE SORCHER

Fate can be fickle, but it’s been kind to Steve Witt, who has enjoyed an intriguing career that’s taken him from corporate executive to co-founder of a fleet start-up company called Driver Safety Technology.

In high school and again in college, he played in a band, which influenced him to major in acoustical engineering. At the time, he added, his dream was to design recording studios, but his plans took a detour when he helped a Canadian friend move back to Ontario to pursue a law career. As payment for helping him move, Witt’s friend invited him to his parents’ cottage on a lake, and one night they went out to listen to live musicat a bar. There, Witt had a chance meeting with a gentleman who’d been sitting in the far corner of the bar with four Japanese men.

“He told me that he and the other men were planning a clandestine business venture,” Witt explained. “I ran into him again an hour later and we started talking and it turned out this man was the executive vice president of ALPs and Motorola in the U.S. The Japanese men at the bar were ALPs executives.” And what were they planning? The formation of Alpine in North America.

One thing led to another and Witt gave the gentleman his home phone number. When he returned home to Boston, the executive called him to offer him an interview for a position with Alpine of America and Alpine of Canada. When he was hired, he said, he was about the seventh Alpine employee.

“Alpine of America had already opened offices in Torrance, California,” Witt said, adding that while he would go there for some orientation, he was ultimately offered a position with Alpine of Canada, and he accepted. He stayed for 18 years. In 1996, he said, he was moved to the Torrance office where he became a vice president of Alpine of America and stayed with the company for 30 years.

Looking back, he noted the entire thing was completely happenstance—“But it was definitely fate.”

Taking Chances Leads to Personal Growth

In 2009, the auto industry was reeling from the financial market meltdown and

it became the second industry to fall. At the time, Witt said, about 80 percent of Alpine’s revenue was OEM. “Car company production was being reduced month by month because no one could get financing to buy a new car, so all of Alpine’s big customers were essentially cutting their forecasts,” he said.

Later that year, Alpine’s OEM business was down 50 percent, according to Witt, who’d been with Alpine in an executive role for so long that “there was an optional agreement which I could exercise as an equitable way out.”

Witt decided to leave the company. As luck would have it, Witt next connected with a company on the leading edge of OEM integration with Apple and iPod. Dice Electronics was a small southern California-based integration business that developed its own hardware and made a path into Apple. “They developed one of the early integration boxes for an iPod to work with a factory radio, then won an OEM contract with a large Japanese company to do their iPod integration. I still don’t know how they found me, but it looked like a fun venture.”

Yet again, though, it was time to pivot. A year later, VOXX Electronics bought

Dice, so the leadership team asked Witt to stay on with the aftermarket team as a vice president. Once again, he said, “Why not?” The decision was made to go with the flow. VOXX brought the company into its organization, and Witt took over as the VP of product and marketing for the vehicle technology group.

Driver Safety Technology Enters the Scene

When it was time for another change, Witt decided to start his own CMO, Chief Marketing Officer, consulting company. Within two weeks, Witt landed a contract. It lasted about six months and led him into the world of driver safety. He signed a second contract with a company that wanted to build a fleet technology sales division, in concert with what was happening in the big picture of driver safety, he added.

“We entered into an agreement to build this new business unit. This company was based on insurance replacement claim fulfillment in the vehicle world,” he said. “For instance, if your car was insured with State Farm, and your car stereo head unit was ripped off and then your insurance company said they would replace it,

then the insurance company would hire this company: Premiere Services.”

Witt said the company had installers, the ability to get any aftermarket equipment necessary, supply agreements and a national agreement with InstallerNet. “They could replace anything for anybody in any state and any city. They wanted to build this new division because they were watching the slow and steady decline of traditional aftermarket car audio,” he explained, adding that as insurance claim frequency began to decline, the company decided to take a closer look at fleets. “They came to me, and we launched this.”

Ultimately, though, it was Witt and the installation director, Carlos Garcia, who partnered to create another venture—Driver Safety Technology. They incorporated the business in December 2017 and opened the doors in January 2018, entering the world of integrated fleet safety. “We aggregated our skillsets, took our experiences and let go of the past,” Witt said. “All of that allowed us to put together a very disruptive business model in the fleet safety environment.”

Building an Operational Framework

There are many differences between the corporate and entrepreneurial worlds,

and Witt benefitted from a solid foundation. “I am blessed because I had an amazing career with Alpine,” he said. “I loved every minute of it.”

In the corporate environment, he said he learned a business must have a solid operational framework which includes repeatable, sustainable procedures. Also, he added, there must be policies that encourage compliance by employees.

“Policies should not be restrictive or punitive. One of the biggest takeaways from my corporate career—30 years at Alpine and three years at VOXX—was that you’ve got to be an entrepreneur with a clear and operational framework.” The new company took shape at a whiteboard. “We spent three months just mapping out the vision we had for Driver Safety Technology,” Witt said. “I leveraged all of those management and executive skills I learned into this new framework of being an entrepreneur and starting something from scratch. I let go of the nemeses of the corporate world—like too many procedures, too much policy—and just took the bits and pieces that were necessary to set up a little corporation focused on doing the right thing for the customer.”

In fact, every wall at DST’s office has a whiteboard, and Witt added that he’s a very visual thinker, so during brainstorm sessions he prefers to have access to one. “That’s how you get all the ideas out,” he said, adding that the approach brings the entire team to the table where they can brainstorm solutions and new initiatives.

“Now your team is on the same page because they understand the objective, whether it’s solving a customer’s problem or brainstorming a new idea.” For Witt, it led to huge personal growth—but it’s also been essential for the success of DST. “There are lots of install companies. There are lots of companies that sell hardware. There are lots of project management companies,” he said, adding, “We decided to bring it all together into one.”

Follow Your Instincts to Find the Right Path

Another key takeaway from the corporate world, according to Witt, is how important servant-type leadership really is. “If you’re a leader and you think you can just boss everyone around, you will fail at some point,” he said. “Trying to live into this notion of servant leadership is what we are practicing here at DST. We have big ideas, but we understand it’s going to take a team to pull things off.”

Empowering employees—whether there are three or 300—is very important, he said. Witt feels this is something many entrepreneurs don’t take into account— just “letting go and allowing people to do their jobs.”

While Witt isn’t thinking about retirement yet, he will make some determinations later this year. Then, he’ll decide whether or not he wants to step back. His passion for the industry remains a constant.

Witt said that throughout his career, whenever he was faced with decisions, he always listened to his heart. If no answer appeared, he added, “I would ask myself, ‘What do I truly want to do?’”

Follow your heart and your passion, he said. “That’s what makes anyone significantly more successful” in whatever field they choose.