School of Business and Economics | Indiana University South Bend

When I graduated, my grades were mediocre. But IUSB gave me
access to great employers. All the Big Eight (at the time) firms
in accounting came to interview people at IUSB. The ability
of IUSB to attract those big employers is critical for a business
career. I went through the interviews and Tom Buck, the
managing partner at the South Bend office of Price Waterhouse,
was my last interview. He asked if I had interviewed with other
firms and what they had said. I responded that I was told to
increase my grade point average by one point which, with one
semester to go, seemed impossible. He asked me what I thought
about that. Something inside told me this was my shot, to lay it
on the table. So I said I thought they were making a big mistake.
That they were looking at an individual who had worked himself
up from the bootstraps, with a family, two children, who’d had
an industrial accident and kept moving on. I said whoever hired
me would get the hardest working son of a bitch that you’d ever
seen in your life. He looked at me, laughed, and asked when I
was going to start? That was it. That was my interview. Incredible
guy, until he died, he and I kept in touch. When I joined
Price Waterhouse, I was ready to work, ready to prove myself.
I worked day and night. I studied hard for the CPA exam and
passed all sections on the first try.
RD: You have achieved a level of success in your career that
very few people have attained. Can you give the rest of us a
few hints?
DB: I have been very fortunate and I want to repay this by
doing what people have done for me. A lot of people took
me under their wing and taught me things. They coached me,
mentored me; you don’t do it on your own. It’s the types of
organizations you affiliate with. If you want to be the best, go
with the best and find ways to get there. Hard work, ethics, all
of the things you read in books and that they teach you are
real. You can’t do it alone. You need people to work with you
with a shared vision and in order to do that you need to be real,
sincere. You’ve got to walk the talk. You’ve got to demonstrate
to others that you are genuine. This is a quality people have told
me I have and I think it is part of the reason I have been able
to create environments that have been successful.
RD: Looking back, was there a major set back or something
you had to overcome in your career?
DB: Sure. The environment I came from and the industrial
accident I had. Putting these aside, I have always viewed things
as opportunities. We have had difficulties, just like every other
business. I’ve done about $3 billion of acquisitions and divestitures.
In each of these deals there are cross roads, set backs
and struggles. I think trying to balance a family life and business
career, you have set backs in relationships that you have
to struggle with, and make personal decisions with, and fortunately
I have made the right ones because my family is fantastic
and my business career has been good. I can’t think of major
set backs that hard work wasn’t able to overcome.
RD: Can you describe what CIRCOR does?
DB: Yes, we are a fluid control company. We make valves and
other fluid control devices for the instrumentation, aerospace,
thermal fluid and energy markets. Our applications are industrial
so you don’t see us in plumbing applications. We make valves
that you and I could walk through. One weighs 58 tons and is
used in the Persian Gulf in high pressure natural gas systems.
Others are small and can fit in the palm of your hand. We’re
about $600 million in revenues. We’re very profitable and have
low debt. We have grown through a series of 36 acquisitions
and have a small staff here in the Boston area. We decentralize
the day to day decisions to the four groups each headed up by
an executive in the field and we are traded on the New York
Stock Exchange.
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