Kevin Doffing

Military Service

During my time as an infantry officer in the military, I learned valuable leadership lessons I have always carried with me. This was the origin of my Servant Leadership framework for business.

My time in combat on the ground rebuilding in Iraq is the driving force behind my lessons on energy security and energy poverty.

Family Service

While I went to school for a Psychology degree, running a business was the best exposure and test of how to run a business. The school of hard knocks is the most expensive and bloody degree in business I could have earned. This wasn't just a professional endeavor, this was a time that I worked with my father and learned a lot about the impact of interpersonal and family dynamics on business leadership.

When I coach business owners and founders I have a lot of empathy built on years of similar experiences.

Community Service

The similarities between non-profits and startups as too numerous to list here. The eternal fundraising and search for product market fit are eerily similar. They are also alike in that messaging and staying focused with limited time and resources is the key to success. A simple message will beat a complex one every day.

Servant Leadership

Ever since leaving the military, I have wanted to enter the energy transition. This has been a dream to work alongside amazing people and businesses in building the future. It is invigorating and fulfilling to see this impact realized with built projects and closed sales.

Most people I've met in my professional career are surprised to learn that I'm a very introverted person. I've built a skill set that resembles extroversion in practice because I've found that building community is the most efficient and effective means of business development.

Military Service

When I was in my college I remember walking through the Memorial Student Center at Texas A&M University on a normal Tuesday morning going to meet for a weekly lunch with a couple of friends. That day changed my life, it was September 11th and I saw in horror the impact of terrorism. It drove me to join the Army after graduation where I would go on to serve as a infantry officer in Iraq. While I was there I got to experience what energy poverty and energy security really mean. I was lucky enough to serve at a time when the tide of war was turning among the civilian population. After a lot of kinetic activity on the ground in Ramadi I was tasked with rebuilding a village outside of town, living with and training an Iraq Army company as well as working with the local city council to manage contracts.

This was my first exposure to the human intelligence activities that would underlie my later business development frameworks. There was no playbook, no method for mapping the local network of contractors, informants, city leaders, and religious leaders. I had to go about teasing out the power brokers in the area, the unofficial but immutable lines of authority within each tribe, and the perceptions between each subtribe. And often lacking an interpreter due to staffing shortages.

My biggest takeaway is that people are... people. There's an amazing diversity within each person, but at our core, we're all the same with similar motivations and expectations. I achieved far more in conducting contracting and rebuilding than I ever did during combat patrols to advance the fight against terrorism. This realization would lead me to a passion for building economic development, it is the best protection from the misery of conflict. That's why while I believe that climate change is an existential threat I rarely mention it. The best medicine is the one we actually take, and markets are the most powerful and efficient means of delivering the economic development needed to mitigate a climate crisis. That's why I feel called to help companies conduct business development efficiently and effectively for all of our benefit.

Small Business Owner

After the military, I bought an oilfield distribution company and ran it for a decade before a successful exit prior to COVID. This was a business that I grew up in, it was my father's business. We ran the business together during that decade and I learned how so many small businesses that find a product market fit can get comfortable and stop selling. The hustle that got things started can eventually cool off. Multigenerational family businesses are a topic I'm very familiar with and passionate about, but change necessitates renewing that hustle that got the business off the ground in the first place. I have had no formal business training in my life until recently, just the school of hard knocks. My recent formal education came through the Executive MBA program at Rice University. It's a fantastic program, but admittedly I went through the program to establish deep ties with the network and to have access to a recurring source of top tier talent. Which has worked out very well working with the entrepreneurship, cleantech, and veterans groups in the school.

Non-Profit Executive

In the latter half of my time running my business, we experienced the oil & gas downturn in 2015. It was devastating to our company and I was faced with the prospect of having to lay off key staff that had been with us for over a decade. Instead, I elected to lay myself off and hand over the day-to-day operations to my team while I started doing consulting outside the business. This led me to take over a small veteran services non-profit I had been on the board of for years. While I had some experience with public speaking to the point, it was not a skill I would have claimed. However, running a non-profit meant constantly fundraising, speaking about our mission, and the impact were making in the veteran community. During this time, I developed the ability to rapidly activate volunteers. I found I was very good at getting "A" players in our community to volunteer their time, talent, and treasure to support our mission.  At one point we were operating over 20 events a month with a staff of only three full-time employees and dozens of highly impactful volunteer leaders.

Energy Transition Consultant

My first exposure to startups really came when I was recruited to launch the Houston chapter of a national veteran entrepreneurship non-profit, Bunker Labs. This plugged me into the Houston Innovation Ecosystem in 2017 as the guy who worked with veteran entrepreneurs (and wouldn't shut up about cleantech for some reason). At that time the City of Houston was reeling from not getting a rose from Amazon in their version of The Bachelor to find their second HQ among America's thirstiest cities. The similarities and differences between startups and operating businesses are at times insignificant and other times worlds apart. At the end of the day I found that they both still revolved around serving their customer, although I noticed that many startups acted as though investors were their customers. Something I had seen in non-profits where funding and service delivery were bifurcated leading to an odd incentive structure that drove counterproductive operational and business development activities.

After exiting my business I wanted to enter the energy transition full time. Having given the advice to build a professional network before needing it to many people I took my own advice. I worked with some early leaders in Houston to develop the first trade group for the renewable energy industry in town resulting in my being elected as the board President for the Renewable Energy Alliance - Houston. Looking to break into the market by hook or crook I was happy to start at the bottom and work my way up, but I was turned away from several large renewable energy companies as overqualified and inexperienced.

Eventually, I went back to consulting in order to begin working full time in the energy transition. Working with founders, providing fractional business development, and market intelligence reporting. I was able to become an Executive in Residence for Rice's Clean Energy Accelerator and a mentor with many startup accelerators in the Houston area from Greentown Labs to the Ion and Impact HUB. At this point it's fantastic to see how Houston has developed our innovation ecosystem and the connectivity among leaders to continue building on that success in this market. I firmly believe that Houston can continue to be the Energy Capital fo the World if we can leverage the strengths and capabilities needed for the energy transition. We have the deepest bench of engineers in the world. We should be the sandbox of the energy transition given the density of energy infrastructure in the area.

Along the way, I've always been passionate about supporting military veterans. Partly for selfish reasons, I love hanging out with other hard charging, ambitious warfighters. I know that the energy transition is also in desperate need of additional talent in our workforce and the military is the most underutilized talent pipeline in our country. Deploying veterans for their next tour of duty into the energy transition isn't just a personal preference, it is the most economical and effective means of accelerating this mission. That's what led me to join the Veteran's Advanced Energy Project, a program of the Atlantic Council's Global Energy Center. I knew little to nothing of public policy development but as a fellow learned a lot through the program. When there was an opportunity to get more involved as a Director and Senior Fellow I immediately volunteered.

Energy Underground

My career has led me to many leadership roles in very different industries and lines of business, but I have always tried my best to answer the call to serve. I believe that service to others is what we each should do. My highest and best use at this stage in my career is opening my network of energy, finance, and military contacts to accelerate the commercial success of the energy transition. The faster we build profitable businesses the more secure and prosperous we all are.