Today we’d like to introduce you to Daniel Shen.
Daniel, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Born and raised in Plano, I’ve spent my entire childhood in the DFW area. I grew up with a natural inquisitiveness for human behavior and eventually took on a personal life mission to help others. Like most young adults, I wanted to pursue a career where I could help others but the major conundrum was how and what could I do to help others. I graduated from the University of Texas at Dallas with a Bachelors in Psychology and faced a daunting job market in my early 20s. Most employers demanded experienced candidates with further education in time where I had neither and a majority of my colleagues were drowning in student debt. With little relevant job experience and less than a months’ worth of rent under my name, there was little that made me stood out to recruiters. I was forced to move into a house shared by several families to stretch out my final five-hundred or so dollars I had left. I worked at an auto repair shop as an assistant and also at a fast food restaurant as a manager to stay afloat for almost half a year waiting for any opportunity that would have me.
As the future looked increasingly dim, I doubled down on my efforts to find a meaningful career path and spent 6 hours every night submitting resumes to every opportunity that I wanted to pursue for 15 straight weeks. On the 15th week, I had gotten my first two job offers and decided to take on a high-risk, high-reward role as an energy consultant. In my customer acquisitions role, I was paid only commissions so many of my immediate family and friends were extremely skeptical if I could last more than a month. It turned out that this was one of the greatest leaps of faith in my life. Two months into my career, my bank account ran dry and I had my car engine blow up on the highway heading towards Arlington to meet a client. With rent due soon and no money available, I dropped everything in my life. I would spend the next 12 months never watching a single TV show and becoming non-existent to my friends in frantic, determined effort towards financial freedom and success. I would carpool and borrow cars for the coming months. I would eat off the dollar menu every day for lunch. I would cancel every gym membership and entertainment subscription. In under a year, I had broken through the dark ages of my life.
That year, I had driven past a luxury apartment that I vowed to one day afford. I finally moved out of the house and into my own loft. I was able to purchase my first dream car and finally got my long-lost Netflix subscription back. For the next five years in the company, I was promoted several times and helped build their company to reach new records. In 2015, after internal conflicts amongst upper management had brewed for several months, I made a moral decision to retire from my position. I had accrued experience, wealth, and most importantly, wisdom during my tenure which allowed me to take a step back from the workforce and begin a new introspective journey to find purpose. It was later that year, I discovered that the inner fire to help other people was never going to die and my time away had invigorated my push to develop and create value for others.
After 6 months of conceptualizing the foundation for Sector 7 Energy, I hired my first team of five in October 2015 and funded the organization with just my savings account. The six of us endured a turbulent beginning; we were crammed inside an office fit for 2 people, we transitioned out of a negative partnership into our independent entity in December 2015, and the original sales team lacked any sort of proper sales foundations. In fact, the detrimental partnership in the first month had almost led us to closing our doors permanently within the first 7 weeks. However, my team and I shared one thing that would keep us going for months to come: unwavering perseverance. We had an unspoken understanding that we would brave the storm for the sake of each other. With the vision to take the organization to national stardom and my promise to share the financial benefits to everyone within the company, we eventually became the fastest growing energy brokerage in Texas. By our 2 year anniversary in 2017, our team has grown to a staff of over 60 nationwide with a 650% growth rate from the previous year. Sector 7 Energy now has plans in the near future to establish new offices in all the remaining markets in Texas as well as Illinois, Ohio, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and the rest of the east coast.
In a matter of just seven years, life looks completely different now. Despite the vacations, the cars, the new experiences, the original mission remains the same: help others no matter what. Whether it’s somebody’s financial goal, career goal, or personal goal, those are the things I want to take part in and be remembered by. I believe that if we continue to find the right people and we continue to do right by them, our vision is only a matter of endurance. As taught by those before me, doing the right thing is always the right thing.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Absolutely not (quite the opposite!)
We’ve gone through thousands of resumes searching for the right people with the right amount of grit only to find just a handful of great teammates. We’ve gone through a detrimental partnership that almost caused us to shut our doors within the first 2 months. As a small firm, we were taken advantage of for the first 12 months in business by vendors, clients, and even hiring on the wrong people. As a bootstrapped start-up, we’ve never had venture capitalist funding and this severely limited our hiring capabilities early on. We couldn’t afford a bigger office space initially to grow and we couldn’t afford the support necessary to function smoothly. Most of the sales support and client support in the first year was handled entirely by myself and one other. With the energy industry being the wild west, there’s a plethora of issues that make it rough for firms like ourselves as well as for the clients we serve too. Fortunately, we happen to be really good at helping our clients!
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Sector 7 Energy – what should we know?
Sector 7 Energy is an energy consulting firm. We help businesses and companies of all sizes save money on their energy. We specialize in contract negotiations and in-depth energy hedging strategies that help our clients win in a long-term picture rather than look for the short-term gains. We also know that our strategies work as almost all our clients have stayed in business and lowered their costs to run their business despite such a volatile energy market.
The thing we are most proud of as a company would be that we go the extra mile in all aspects. For our staff, we make sure that their careers are fulfilling, rewarding, and a journey worth being a part of by investing heavily into them. For our clients, we make sure that no issue is left unresolved. We are available to our clients 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year! If there’s ever an issue that needs immediate attention and if my staff is swamped, I personally make time to jump in and ensure customer satisfaction. For our business partners, we take customer satisfaction, branding, and security measures to the next level. Our partners know that they always get more than what they ask for.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
I believe the most important quality to my success is my willingness to share. I take my company on a company-paid trip every year, most of the company profits go straight back to my people via incentives, and I’m always in discussions on how to improve their lives every month. We do new team-building activities, we go out to the nicest restaurants with everyone in the firm, and we even hang out at the office after work as a family. My vision is not for myself to have a fulfilling destination but for everyone around me to have a fulfilling journey.
Contact Info:
- Address: 500 N Central Expy Suite 422, Plano, TX 75074
- Website: www.sector7energy.com
- Phone: 972-509-0159
- Email: info@sector7energy.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sector7energy/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sector7energy/
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