Subordinates find Doug easily approachable, yet his management style naturally commands respect. He leads with a complete open-door policy, but he expects those he works with to take responsibility within their area of accountability. In his many years of management, Doug has found that often people find it safe and comfortable to follow strict rules, directives, and qualifications, but safe and comfortable usually only lead to capable, never invaluable. Invaluable only comes when we are willing to think and act beyond the boundaries that confine us to mediocrity. Doug does that daily! He works best under pressure; He is a quick learner; He is organized, self-directed & meticulous nearly to obsession yet he also works well as a team player.

Doug holds patents, awards, and abundant experience in technology, operations & plant management, R&D, planning, process engineering, equipment design & optimization, and customer/public relations to his credit. However, we at Hearthside Business Systems, believe that his best asset is his ability to think “outside of the box” to quickly analyze and solve problems. Often this “holistic” view of a problem coupled with a willingness to ask for and follow God’s direction has quickly revealed cost-effective solutions that would never have come otherwise. Doug’s thinking is never pigeon-holed by narrowly focused educational concepts, mere theories, or a lack of real-world experience—rather it is replete with over 25 years of acquired knowledge, diverse experience, and a broad array of perspectives to problem resolution, projects, and daily tasks.

In addition to Doug’s extensive technology and management skills, he is also a licensed pilot and a graduate of The School of Modern Photography. He began his long career history as a professional photographer at age fifteen taking sports photos at all the high school events, covering news, sports, and accidents for the local newspaper, and doing portraiture work. He later added wedding, event, greeting card, aerial, and commercial/industrial photography when he opened his own photography studio back in 1979 where he developed all his own photos the “old fashioned way” with a darkroom, enlarger, developer, and fixer.

And if that wasn’t enough, between 1993 and 2002, Doug and his wife Dianna ran a graphic design business in which Doug utilized his extensive skills with numerous graphic design and page layout applications while his wife, Dianna, drew all the artwork. They did everything from concept to creating the polymer plates for the presses and everything in between including creating training manuals, food labels, billboards, truck murals, and typesetting, illustrating, and editing several books for renowned authors.

Doug's association with computers began at age five when he began spending summer vacations with his father, a Burroughs Field Engineer, on service calls ranging from adding machines to mainframe computers. In 1967, at age nine, Doug built and programmed a simple computer out of scrap parts scavenged from computers his father had repaired. At age 14, he solved a glitch in a bank mainframe computer and saved them many thousands of dollars by quickly locating a fractured trace on one of the boards.

• Doug Hodnett, Regional Manager at Boyertown Packaging Corp, said, "Time and again Doug has worn several 'hats' at the same time and done so to the betterment of the company and the employees. [His most recent efforts] will allow BPC to be more competitive in current markets and allow us to enter new markets where our costs were previously too high."

• In an annual review, Charles Moore, a chemist and former supervisor said, “Doug has a talent for evaluating an unknown, designing a test matrix for the critical variables and parameters, then quickly finding a feasible solution.”

• Paul Tortorici, an engineer and former colleague made the comment, “Doug’s grasp of theoretical processes is surpassed only by his ability to a turn theory into actuality or to accurately predict its impossibility.”

• Jim Manis, one of the owners of Wheeler's and Home Team Builder Services, LLC said, "We are confident in Doug’s seemingly bottomless skill set, his project leadership and management abilities, and particularly his flair for saving us money…"

Regardless of whether Doug is running his own company, working as a direct employee for another company, or working as a managed service provider or consultant, he is tenacious and relentless in his efforts to improve quality, efficiency, productivity, and customer service while reducing costs. Could your company use someone like that in today's economy?