Phil Panzarella - Bernhardt Wealth Management

Phil Panzarella
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Walking the Talk
Live, learn, earn and return. That’s the
mantra behind Phil Panzarella’s talk, and one
doesn’t even need to spend five minutes with the
man to see that he translates those words into
practice in each corner of his life, and on a daily
basis. “God put us on Earth to make a living, but
not just for ourselves,” he explains. “The ‘return’
piece is the most important part of that equation.
It’s not what we take, it’s what we give back that’s
important.”
As the founder, President, and CEO of
CPS Professional Services, LLC
(CPS), Phil understands that the
spheres
of
one’s
life
are
interconnected, and he has used this
cornerstone to build his business
upon a solid foundation with four
guiding principles. “We make sure
to take care of our customers, our
employees, our community, and
our partners,” he lists. “Those are
the four legs of the stool, and they
all have to be in balance. We spend
as much time on philanthropic
activity as we do on our business,
but to me they’re all intertwined. Giving back has
been a part of our corporate culture from the
beginning.”
Prior to launching CPS, Phil worked for
Siemens and assisted in the establishment of a
proxy company that would allow the organization
to pursue the classified community in the U.S.
Being a German-owned enterprise, they were
required to set up a firewall company with a proxy
board of directors to do business in the U.S., which
Phil ran for three years.
One day, he came home and told his wife
he was going to go out and start his own business.
“I felt that if I could do what I was doing for
Siemens, I could do it somewhere else,” he recalls.
He would have to put his house up as collateral,
and he assumed that his wife would say no.
“Truth be told, I kind of hoped she would say no,
because there was part of me that was afraid to
take that leap,” he says. “Early in our marriage
she had spent twelve years travelling all over the
country with me while I was in the military, and
she finally had a home and stability. Instead, she
said she couldn’t wait for me to go do it, and that
she was counting on me. With that, there was no
looking back.”
Thus, Phil and his partners started
Capture Planning Solutions in 2005 with the intent
of helping companies win deals. In those first
couple months, the hardest thing was making
payroll, and he and his partners
worked out of their homes for the
first year. As fate would have it,
their first client was Siemens, which
was trying to win a multi-billion
dollar program and was competing
for one of ten awards. Not only did
Phil and his team help the company
win one of those ten seats, but they
also won all three of the initial tasks
up for grabs, earning Capture
Planning
Solutions
instant
popularity with Siemens.
“We
became one of their go-to teams
when it came to capture and proposal support,”
says Phil. “We flew back and forth to Germany
pulling teams together for them and were very
successful.”
Within twelve months, they had
generated enough business to land them on solid
ground and to fund further growth.
As Capture Planning Solutions developed,
however, Phil noted that each large contract
required forty percent of its work to go to small
businesses, and he and his team were charged with
writing the small business subcontracting plans
and to farm out that forty percent. That prompted
Phil and his partners to start a professional
services firm, CPS Professional Services, in 2006, to
replace Capture Planning Solutions. Beginning
with about $50,000 in revenue, the company has
since grown to around $12 million in 2011 and is
still going strong today.
“To me, running your own business is
Phil Panzarella
about
making bigger commitments,”
Phil
describes. “The relationships you have with your
employees are much more personal, and you feel
more responsibility toward them. Furthermore,
I’ve found that it’s about continuous learning. Just
when you think you’ve experienced everything,
you learn something new. I’m always learning
something new. One big thing I’ve discovered
recently, for example, is that sometimes you have
to take a step back to get ahead. Growing up in a
military culture, I’ve always been aggressively
moving forward, but sometimes you have to take a
step back in order to move to the right, shift
around an obstacle, and be able to get ahead and
take that next step.”
Like Phil himself, CPS originally found its
start in the military, providing process
improvement and performance management
services after the government stipulated new
regulation
and
performance
management
standards that required each agency to put forth
metrics to reflect how they were doing. At that
time, the Army had made a huge decision to move
in the area of process improvement, and CPS was
charged with the training for their personnel,
running the program management office and
streamlining their processes to become more
effective and efficient with the goal of delivering
better solutions in the long term. “We specialize in
identifying the process and driving out the waste,”
Phil explains. “And what’s great about how we
operate is that the kind of talent we bring to the
table can be applied to finance, IT, logistics,
healthcare, the VA, restaurants, manufacturing,
and more. It’s all about process.” Thus, though
CPS’s initial focus was on the Department of
Defense, and though they continue to serve the
government space, they’re also making a conscious
decision to move into the commercial healthcare
arena as well.
Today, CPS has about 42 full time
employees,
with
a
stable of additional
professionals that they pull in as needed. “We’re
very focused on where we are and on making sure
that we can live up to our commitments, because
the most important thing is being able to deliver,”
Phil affirms. With this in mind, he has made sure
that CPS doesn’t grow so quickly that it sacrifices
quality, thus yielding a controlled and intentional
approach that has served the company well. Last
year, CPS began to scale up its infrastructure, and
this
year, they’re investing in business
development, opening the aperture enough to get
a broader focus on who their customer sets are and
how they can drive more opportunity. “The ramp
for growth is ripe, and we’re prepared to take that
on,” Phil affirms. “There’s been a method to the
madness, and we have our sights set on growing
the company to around $50 million in the next
several years in accordance to a strategic blueprint
that we meet to review each quarter.”
Though Phil’s leadership style and
management philosophy were hulked and honed
in the military, they first took root while he was
growing up and observing his parents. His father
was a blue-collar worker with an eighth grade
education who started his own construction
company at a young age and was very successful.
He taught his children that if they wanted
something, they could have it, as long as they went
out and worked for it. Likewise, his mother
started working at a steel mill doing bookkeeping
when she was young and later kept the books for
her husband’s business. Phil’s father would do
work pro bono for those who couldn’t afford it,
instilling in Phil that strong drive to give back that
characterizes the company culture he leads today.
He also had a football coach who taught him the
power of perseverance and a good attitude.
Phil’s first job was for Al Blackford at the
local cemetery, cutting lawns and digging graves.
The following several summers, he went to work
in construction and landscaping for his father. He
attended high school from 1971 to 1975, just after
the Vietnam War, and he recalls joining Marine
Corps Junior ROTC Program that prompted him to
consider applying to West Point. He had never
considered the military, but something in the
program resonated with something deep in the
core of his character, and upon graduation, he
found himself enrolling in the highly selective and
rigorous academy with the same attitude he would
portray decades later when he launched his own
business—no looking back.
West
Point
proved
exceedingly
challenging, yet equally as rewarding. “That first
year was all about taking orders,” Phil recalls.
“You have to learn how to follow before you can
lead. You have to learn how to motivate people to
follow you into battle, and when it comes to
leadership, I think there isn’t another institution in
the world that can compare to West Point. It’s
about character building.” The years he spent
there were a conglomeration of life-changing
Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area
experiences, which included spending his junior
year in Australia for an exchange program.
Among
his
biggest
life-changing
experiences, however, came after West Point,
when Phil and his high school sweetheart decided
to get married and then rent a U-Haul to drive
down to Fort Benning, Georgia, to start a new life
together. “Her faith and confidence in me never
wavered, and that made all the difference along
the way,” says Phil. “She was with me through
my time at West Point and then through twelve
moves in ten years while I was in the military.”
During that time, Phil got his command as
a first lieutenant out of Fort Lewis, Washington,
and was one of four Army officers to attend the
Officer Advanced Course with the Marine Corps
in the Amphibious Warfare School. After that, he
was sent to graduate school at Georgetown and
then back to West Point to teach. While there, he
served as a tactical officer and was responsible for
cadet development, and as a young captain and
role model committed to walking—and running—
the talk, he would run the PT test with them until
one fateful day when he had to get his knee
aspirated, leading to his fourth surgery. At that
point, the military decided to take him out of
combat arms. If Phil wanted to stay, he’d have to
branch transfer and retool, so with a heavy heart,
he decided it was time to see what else the world
had in store for him.
As a result of that decision, on December
22, 1988, Phil found himself medically separated
from the United States military. He had not
looked for one job and had not done one interview,
as he had thought the earliest he’d be leaving was
June of 1989.
“The Army made a business
decision,” he remembers. “That was a big gotcha
moment for me, but we landed on our feet.
Sometimes you think the worst is going to happen,
but the best ends up happening. Things turned
out for the better. I’m a firm believer that things
happen for a reason and that God has a plan for all
of us—you just have to be patient.”
After his sudden discharge, Phil and his
wife moved to Virginia and began to explore the
question of how he could translate his combat
arms and airborne infantry training into
marketable job skills. “Leadership is one thing,
but how was I going to take the skills I’d learned in
the military and apply them to sales, marketing, or
operations?” Phil remembers wondering. “How
was I going to take those skills and map them over
into something that was meaningful to someone
who would hire me? A lot of our soldiers are
facing this same issue today. I decided I would
look for an opportunity with a big company that
would take the time to train me, and that’s what I
found in IBM.”
Just as he had hoped, IBM hired him and
sent him to their large systems marketing
program. After a few highly successful years in
sales, they then put him in their federal systems
division where he could do what he did best—
manage people and lead a team. However, the
company then sold that entire federal division to
another company that eventually became
Lockheed Martin, and the transition prompted Phil
to leave and take a position at a small business that
was later acquired by Entex. Entex was then
purchased by Siemens, where he moved up the
ranks to hatch the idea of launching his own
enterprise, and the rest is history.
Finding success in the military, in the
corporate world, and finally as an entrepreneur
requires nothing short of unshakable vision, agile
adaptability, and an iron-clad will, and Phil
attributes these traits to the time he spent serving
our country. “The military teaches you how to be
aggressive, how to look ahead, and how to move
forward,” he avows. “When I got into the business
world, I saw where I needed to go and I mapped
out a plan with the help of others. I always had a
concept of where I wanted to be, and I think that’s
why I’ve been successful.“
Also integral to his success has been, of
course, his ability to lead. “When it comes to
leadership, it’s about getting others to do things
they may not have done themselves without some
guidance,” Phil explains. “You can’t be afraid to
make command decisions. You have to be able to
challenge people, but you also have to be ready to
take criticism. And above all else, if you want to
instill in your team a sense of discipline and an
ethical model, you have to be able to walk the talk.
The way you behave and hold yourself is more of a
learning tool to everyone around you than
anything you could say. That’s why I’m always
trying to do the right things and to live the way I
expect people around me to live. And to me, you
don’t lead to get ahead; you lead to move people
ahead. You don’t step on people to get to the next
level. You raise people up, and if you help enough
people around you get to where they need to be,
you will get to where you need to be.”
Phil Panzarella
Indeed, raising people up is an integral
aspect of CPS and of Phil’s life overall. Whether
he’s helping wounded soldiers through the Easter
Seals program, supporting junior high and high
school students through the Leadership and Ethics
program he co-leads, or working with the
American Freedom Foundation to raise money in
support of wounded soldiers, Phil makes it a
priority to give back everyday. “Sometimes we
can be so focused on our own lives and families
that we don’t notice the great need that’s out there,
but one doesn’t have to go far to find it,” he
reminds us. “It’s right here in this county, and
everyone can do something to make a difference.”
By living, learning, earning, and returning, we get
a return on our investment in the world that is
exponentially greater than what we begin with—a
return that echoes in professional success, personal
satisfaction, and a better future for all.
© August 2012 Gordon J. Bernhardt. All rights
reserved. Reprinted by permission.
 By Gordon J. Bernhardt, CPA, PFS, CFP ®, AIF®
About Gordon J. Bernhardt
President and founder of Bernhardt Wealth
Management and author of Profiles in Success:
Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the
Washington D.C. Area, Gordon provides financial
planning and wealth management services to affluent
individuals, families and business-owners throughout
the Washington, DC area. Since establishing his firm in
1994, he and his team have been focused on providing
high-quality service and independent financial advice to
help clients make informed decisions about their money.
For more information, visit www.BernhardtWealth.com
and Gordon’s Blog.
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Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area
Phil Panzarella