Six sectors, one problem in every one of them: lack of sales. Twenty seven years of fixing it is what Executive Orders is built out of.
Six sectors, plus a long trail of startups and small businesses along the way. One problem presented in every one of them: lack of sales. Using his leadership and his systems, one solution was achieved every single time: growth.
As EVP Tom Gathers once told him directly, what gets measured gets done.
Eric's own addition: accountability isn't a corporate buzzword, it's a lifestyle choice.
It measures the one thing that actually matters, whether the calendar fills, and holds the follow up accountable, so it stops depending on who remembered.
As the owner, you get to decide every day whether you want to be the type of owner who has to work ON the business, or the type who gets to work IN it.
That's a choice every business owner should be able to make, not one you're forced into.
No account managers, no relay race, nobody learning your business on your dime.
Twenty seven years operating across six sectors. Opened Connecticut from a zero dollar segment to $12 million in year one and $17 million in year two for a 75 year old company, then co-founded a remodeling business on $7,000 that does $3 million a year. Owns the number on every account.
HumanUConn graduate with a marketing degree. Played baseball at UConn his freshman year. Newest addition to the sales team.
HumanCentral Connecticut State University, where she was active in theatre and dance and graduated with honors. Runs the office and keeps Eric's calendar honest. Excellent with customers, and genuinely good with people.
Human
The system everything runs on. Connects the booking, the follow up, the reviews and the reporting so they behave like one machine instead of four subscriptions that don't speak to each other.
AI agent
Writes and ships the code. Sites, booking flows, integrations, and the plumbing behind the follow up. Works in hours, not sprints, which is why a change you ask for on a Monday is not a roadmap item for next quarter.
AI agentCampaigns, content and the channel reporting. Watches what actually converted and says so plainly, including when the answer is that the money should stop going somewhere.
AI agent
A dive center in Key West. A LongHorn Steakhouse through the Darden acquisition. Connecticut opened from a zero dollar segment to $12 million in year one and $17 million in year two for a 75 year old company. A remodeling business co-founded on $7,000 that does $3 million a year.
Every one of them lived or died on whether the calendar was full, and every one of them lost customers that had already been paid for, because nobody followed up.
Executive Orders began in 2022, well before it had a name. Eric built the first version of the Azimuth platform in his off hours and became his own first client. In 2025, the growth of AI let him close the last gap between design and engineering, and Executive Orders was officially incorporated to do that work for others.
Eric grew up the son of a small business owner. His favorite class in high school was Entrepreneurship, where a districtwide mock stock challenge came down to reading the rules correctly. He went penny stocks instead of blue chips and took first place in the Shawnee Mission district. His first business lesson was a simple one: risk isn't scary with proper planning, and the rewards can far outweigh the risk once you understand it.
He went to Northwest Missouri State on a track scholarship to study Computer Science, then transferred to Kansas State and finished his degree in Psychology, once he realized the questions that interested him most were about people: why they buy, why they stay, why they follow. He worked construction through school, learning it the old school way, and found the entrepreneurial spirit and the trades had a great deal in common.
At Kansas State he took a scuba class that met at the university natatorium, where he also worked as a lifeguard, and paid the shop owner back in code. First a website for Wheatland Sports, traded for private lifeguard work. Then a full online store, one of the first anyone there had seen, where a student could buy every piece of gear a class required before the first pool session started. He kept that site running for years afterward from Key West, traded against time on the boat as a divemaster. It was 1999, and it was the first time he watched a website do the selling instead of sitting there describing the shop.
Out of college he joined CORT Furniture, a Berkshire Hathaway company, and rose to regional manager. Real world corporate training, learned inside the Warren Buffett family tree.
He was also teaching SCUBA at a YMCA and volunteering with the Boy Scouts, driving from Kansas City to Manhattan, Kansas every week to teach and mentor youth. Chaperoning a troop dive trip to Key West changed the next decade of his life. He took a job as a dive instructor and shop manager under Dr. Robert Lockwood, a silent pioneer in the SCUBA world and a giant in the Key West dive community, and ended up running the largest dive operation in Key West. He gave time and leadership to the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, helped develop training programs for the REEF Foundation, earned his USCG 100-Ton Master captain's license, and became an Instructor Trainer with NAUI. Then he met Captain Mark Woods, his first entrepreneurial mentor and business partner. Together they opened their own dive center, Eric's first business.
When the dive industry consolidated in the early 2000s, he landed in Jacksonville with a "small" restaurant group called RARE Hospitality ($986 million), becoming Managing Partner of one of their flagship brands, LongHorn Steakhouse, and staying through the Darden acquisition ($1.4 billion). Fifteen years, multiple new locations, executive level project development, and a mentoring family tree that produced team leads, managers, managing partners and directors of operations, plus a few thousand hourly employees along the way. He never left construction either, flipping houses, designing and consulting on projects, and helping launch startups the whole time.
During COVID he was recruited back to familiar ground in the contracting business. NEWPRO brought him in to break their 75 year old family business into a new market, Connecticut, and he took it from a zero dollar segment to $12 million in year one and $17 million in year two.
NEWPRO sold to private equity, and Eric's exit landed him in another startup: Imagine Remodel, co-founded on only $7,000 and grown to $3 million a year in under three years.
Executive Orders began in 2022, well before it had a name. Eric built the first version of the Azimuth platform in his off hours, late nights and weekends, and became his own first client. Being both the developer and the customer shaped what it became, aimed squarely at what goes wrong when an owner outsources their marketing.
In 2025, the growth of AI let Eric close the last gap between design and engineering, and Executive Orders was officially incorporated to do that work for others.
Nine questions, about two minutes, a real report at the end. No call, no card, yours either way.
Rate my site →Twenty seven years of it, most of it in somebody's living room at 8pm. Ask the question, get a real answer, no obligation attached to it. Or book fifteen minutes if you would rather talk.