Grinder


Don’t be mistaken; Leslie has not grown soft. “For me personally, I’m a grinder. From a business perspective, each day I wake up with two goals: support my team and outwork my


competition.”


Leslie comes by his grinder mentality honestly. “I’m not the smartest guy around. When I was undergoing graduate education, I was surrounded by brilliant, educated people with a lot of letters after their names, but I held my own because I work as hard as I possibly can. It’s been my experience in life and in general, if you work as hard as you can and you’re morally grounded, you’re going to succeed.”


That can-do, positive attitude is of paramount importance to Leslie. “I’ll take someone with a good attitude over someone who’s already technically


competent,” he says. “Someone with a bad attitude can wreck company culture and create a hostile work environment. If you wind up with a bad-attitude employee, you try to coach them up, but it can be difficult. A good, positive attitude goes a long, long way.”


In addition to the right outlook, when applying to work on NAASCO’s team, bring your “H-game”: honesty and hard work. “Moral character is the most crucial attribute that holds the most value for me. If you don’t have a good heart and a moral foundation, it’s a non- starter for me,” he says. “Next is, without a doubt, the desire to learn and better yourself. (This syncs with the best career advice Leslie says he ever received: Never stop learning.) With those two attributes, good moral character and willingness to improve, we can bring about anybody in as a team member.”


Pushing Through Pandemic


Leslie must have successfully screened and trained his team because he says they performed


“exceptionally


well” during the pandemic. “Where many companies had to, unfortunately, lay off team members, we expanded ours while enhancing our offerings. Our sales team didn’t take the usual approach of going solely with virtual video meetings. We were very aggressive and active in the marketplace. Honoring whatever COVID safety protocols were in place at the time, we made in-person sales calls,” he says. In fact, from March 2020 until the end of the year, Leslie says he personally visited 100 different customer sites. He felt safe doing this due to past non-NAASCO experience. He says he had clinical training on preventing disease transmission (e.g.,


washing


hands frequently, etc.) when he visited healthcare facilities during electrification projects.


He’s not blowing smoke; Leslie helped establish and served on the Board of Directors for the Virginia Society of Healthcare Engineers, a non-profit organization that focuses on improving and enhancing healthcare facilities’


operations, and maintenance through planning, education, cooperation, advocacy,


and


APSCON 2021, New Orleans, L-R, Jennifer Llera, Scott Leslie, Jim “Uncle Jimmy” Leslie, and Michael Leslie


design innovation. “Whereas other companies during the pandemic were mainly doing mailers and other similar things, we got out in the marketplace and actually brought in new work,” he says with pride in his team.


Needless to say, a man who makes 100 on-site customer visits in the middle of a shutdown pandemic doesn’t have loads of leisure time. “I hate to say it, but I don’t have a life right now. I’m currently building a team and building a business. That takes over 70 hours a week. I rarely turn off,” he concedes. His typical weekday begins at 5 a.m. and includes about 12 hours of work and, when he’s home, a few early morning minutes with his wife to walk their yellow English Labrador, Harley.


Still, when he finds that elusive off switch, he likes to hit ‘em straight on the golf course with his teen son, Sebastian. (The Leslies also have a college- graduate daughter, Torey, who’s out of the nest running her own yoga instruction business.) “Golf teaches you to concentrate and to work through challenges you encounter on the course,” he enthuses. “It’s a rare sport that allows different generations to play together. When my dad visits or we visit him, we three tee it up. It’s awesome and I absolutely love it.”


infrastructure,


That superlative word, “awesome,” cropped up only one other time in our interview and it’s telling that Leslie used it as a last word of appreciation for rotorcraft pros: “Having worked for large organizations like General Electric in electrification, I most appreciate the rotorcraft market because everyone is like family. The helicopter community is very welcoming. The industry is full of great, hardworking, honest people. They’re awesome.”


That’s the final word.


16


Nov/Dec 2021


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