John is the Co-founder of StacDek. He has worked with companies and leaders in private equity, international politics, humanitarian investment, tech startups, nonprofits, and government agencies. John helps founders, owners, and executives design organizations capable of achieving their vision. He is passionate about merging timeless principles with cutting-edge methods, tools, and technologies.
John is a strategist and first-principle thinker with a personal mission to help good things grow. He is an avid learner who reads 100+ books a year on startups, business, innovation, psychology, leadership, and the occasional thriller. He has come to understand the fundamental principles that enable teams to drive growth and achieve ambitious goals. When not working, John can be found outside wake surfing and mountain biking with his wife and three kids.
Heather comes from an athletic family, and he passion for sports and competition led her to be a D1 athlete and later get her Ph.D. in performance psychology. She has worked extensively with the Army and the Air Force, law enforcement officers, athletes, teams, schools, and business leaders.
Heather wrote one of the first resilience training resources for law enforcement officers and helped launch a resilience training program for Seattle Police Department.
Heather is passionate about helping leaders build performance thinking into their cultures and processes. She believes if we don't change how we think, we can't expect different results.
Heather works with the StacDek team to design the human side of our growth strategies. During our growth assessment process, she looks at how the client's current patterns, processes, and values align with growth objectives. Heather understands that even in the AI age, a company's most powerful asset to drive growth is people.
Scott Dohner is the former CEO and chairman of the board of Superfeet Worldwide, the leading insole provider in the outdoor and sporting goods retail markets. He led Superfeet to incredible sustained growth and profit. Before retiring from Superfeet, Scott set up an ESOP (Employee Share Ownership Program) that resulted in significant employee payouts when the company later sold.
Scott is a holistic business thinker and focuses on culture, value and integrity. Under his leadership, Superfeet became known for industry-leading reliability, from product to shipping and customer care. Scott has led all the companies he has been an owner of to similar results. Now he focuses most of his time on advising companies and mentoring business leaders.
Todd had a successful career with Honeywell and ABB, both leading global organizations in the Industrial manufacturing and automation industry. Following his years in the corporate world Todd founded, and in 2021 sold an award-winning, nationally ranked home automation company. For over fifteen years and continuing until today, Todd has managed to stay out of trouble through his work with SummitTrek Coaching where he continues to blur the lines between business and ministry. Todd lives in the Texas hill country with his wife Carol of over 30 years. Their two daughters attended their alma mater Texas A&M University and both live in Texas. Todd enjoys almost any outdoor adventure; you might find him hunting in Alaska, backpacking the backcountry Mountains, repelling into glaciers, SCUBA diving with sharks or overlanding across Africa. He’s equally comfortable in the corporate board room or a sea side village.
Jeff has been involved in building some of the fastest-growing businesses over his 35-year career. He started in 1985 working for Digital Equipment Corporation, one of the largest computer companies in the world at that time, performing roles from individual contributor to Sales Manager to Director of Business Development and eventually Vice President of Sales and Marketing.
After selling Digital to HP, Jeff started his entrepreneurial journey as the VP of Sales and Marketing for a young startup called Video Interactive, the first Video on Demand company to serve paying customers in North America. After three years of successful growth, Jeff sold the company to Samsung Electronics of Korea. Jeff then joined a new startup out of Mountain View, California called Netscape. Jeff was one of the first sales leaders in the company and quickly grew his team and revenue into a $150M division. After the most successful IPO for that time, Netscape was then sold to Sun Microsystems. Jeff continued working with startups as a C-level executive to build and lead them to successful outcomes, one of his companies was successfully acquired by Salesforce, another was acquired by SoftwareAG out of Germany, and another was successfully acquired by Oracle.
Jeff moved from the internet software world to become the Chief Business Architect and Chief Business Officer of Dude Perfect, one of the most successful digital influencer brands in the world.
Jeff now leverages the knowledge, wisdom, experience, and connections he has acquired over the last 35 years to work with and help the next wave of innovative entrepreneurs reach their potential.
Eric brings almost three decades of financial and operational leadership with extensive domestic and international experience. Eric has spent most of his career dedicated to turnaround management and corporate renewal. He’s co-led multiple M&As resulting in aggregate purchase prices over $500 million and secured over $250 million in debt and equity capital. He’s served as Chief Financial Officer for multiple companies held by a local San Antonio private equity fund which managed more than $6 billion in assets.
Eric has worked in industries that include medical device manufacturing, aero-defense manufacturing, oil and gas, banking and brokerage, telecom, and e-Commerce.
Eric holds a bachelors in Management in addition to an MBA. He’s also achieved certifications in Lean and Six Sigma methodologies. He’s been inducted into the prestigious Beta Gamma Sigma honor society as a lifetime member and appointed as the President of its South Texas Alumni Chapter. He’s also been awarded Chartered Fellow (CMgr FCMI) by the Chartered Management Institute and Fellow Chartered Management Accountant (FCMA) and Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA) by the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants and Financial Modeling and Valuation Analysis (FMVA®) and Financial Planning and Wealth Management (FPWM®) by the Corporate Finance Institute.
Eric has been married for 20+ years and is the proud father of his wonderful daughter. They all reside in Boerne, Texas.
Eric is the Founder of The 4Nineteen Group, an advisory services consulting company who caters primarily to startup, small and medium sized businesses.
Unendingly curious, customer-obsessed, compelling storyteller, revenue-focused.
A self-motivated senior marketer with 10+ years of experience in full-stack digital marketing & sales, B2B SaaS product marketing, demand generation, and paid traffic.
Passionate about all things leadership development, marketing, strategy, and building great products with high attention to detail.
When not growing marketing departments, I enjoy reading history or entrepreneurship books, spending time with my family, producing electronic music, and enjoying hiking in the sunny Texas Hill country.
Over the last decade, I've been blessed to roll up my sleeves and get my hands dirty in a wide variety of businesses.
Here's a quick punchlist:
Ten years ago, I left a startup hedge fund in the US and went to work with the President of Malawi. I returned knowing that the purpose of my career was to "build good things" by increasing the effectiveness and impact of businesses and non-profits.
When I met Heather, she was using her Ph.D. in performance psychology to teach resilience to soldiers, business leaders, and athletes. Together, we studied what made great organizations and movements effective. This led us to spend thousands of hours with highly successful entrepreneurs, executives, advisors, and leaders. Each step of the way, we had the honor of practicing what we learned with our clients.
We came to understand that practicing simple principles consistently drove outsized growth, profit, and impact. The purpose of StacDek is to help great organizations unlock value and improve their profitability, impact, and growth.
Want to hear more about what we learned over the years and how we help clients? Let's talk. We can usually identify simple ways to unlock value for a business and the people it serves in just a couple of meetings.
- John Walt