Meet Brian Kavicky, Associate at Lushin

October 18th, 2010

Associates at Lushin have to write blogs on a regular basis.  As the newest associate, I get what some would call a free pass—I get to write about myself.  That might be easy to do, I mean everyone likes to talk about themselves, but I want people to actually read it.

So, I will skip the part about me being married, having two kids, a boy who is 8, and a girl who is 5.  I won’t talk about the fact that I own a small go kart supply business and race go karts with my family.  Nobody wants to hear that I am a licensed pilot and love to play poker.  There is not one person out there that even cares that I was on the winning team of the 2010 Crabby Open Charity Golf tournament.  I just won’t even mention all that stuff.

What people do ask me is why I am crazy?  Why did I leave a perfectly good job to come to Lushin?  I had ownership in a company, a good salary, lots of perks, and an interesting environment to work in.  Why leave that and start over doing something completely unrelated?  I’m crazy I guess.

In 2003, I moved from another perfectly good job in California to join the family business—Maddox Industrial Contractors.  Jay Maddox, my father in law, was looking for someone to manage Maddox and be part of his succession plan.  At that time, the business was approaching the 20 year milestone and was ready to jump to the next level.  As I began to have more management responsibility and control of the business, things got better and better.  Like every other company, we were having record sales years and recording pretty decent profits.  When the wheels came off the economy in 2009, we were prepared, and we also weren’t prepared.  We had the relationships, the financial backbone, and the wherewithal to get through the difficult time.  We grew our business, added new customers, and began eating away at market share as our competitors struggled by lowering prices and quality to make ends meet.  In 2010, Maddox will have doubled sales and returned to normal operational levels.  So why leave?  Why not add stair steps to that success and keep the momentum rolling?

First generational business owners struggle with one main issue.  Control.  When you add in the complexity of the family dynamic, it complicates the issues further.  Without getting into the details of how and why things happened, it came down to control and financial issues with the succession plan.  It just wasn’t working for my father-in-law and I the way it could have.

To add fuel to the fire, Lushin was always tugging on me.  Everything we had learned from them worked in our business.  I saw transformations in my people that I had never been able to generate on my own.  My customers and I had stronger relationships than I ever dreamed possible.  I saw changes in myself as well.  People began to come to me for help with their sales and business issues.  They looked to me as a resource and I liked extending a helping hand. The more I looked around at what I was spending my time doing and what I enjoyed doing, the more I knew that Lushin was going to be the vehicle that got me to help more people.

I may be crazy, but I am on the path that I believe I should be on.  It may not be the path that any of you would choose.  There isn’t a line out the door for people asking to make 3000 cold calls just to get in the habit of making them.  Most people wouldn’t leave a salaried job, much less my job, for a job that pays straight commission. But I did.

So that is my only testimony to what we do here at Lushin and how we help people.  I believe so much in the results that we can generate for our clients that I made the insane decision to join the team.

Oh, and I won’t tell you that I like camping and fishing too.  That would be too much information to share about me.

Brian Kavicky



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“Lushin has helped me gain a skill set that has allowed me to ask the right questions, organize my thoughts, and maximize my time selling what the customer needs.”

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