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Consider Us a Springboard

Your business goals are huge. Which means your obstacles can seem unsurmountable. Coast Practical helps your team leap over them.

Advanced Business Training

Online Course & Event Production

Strategic Growth Consulting

C-Level Executive Coaching

About Us

Several friends and colleagues formed Coast Practical Investments in 2008 in order to invest as equity partners in small businesses through the economic recession. Having completed several of these investments and realizing five exits, we discovered that the true strength of Coast Practical lies in advising and driving the leadership, financial and cultural growth of for-profit and non-profit organizations.

Since 2008, our teams have delivered exceptional business results in software, aerospace metal finishing, consumer insurance, manufactured electronics, business training and public university oversight, among others.

Brett has personally coached more than a dozen C-Level executives, from the startup level to multi-billion dollar enterprises in improving Business Results. Specifically, he is an expert in Sales, Leadership, Negotiations, Diversity and Presentation skills.

Today, the Coast Practical team includes a network of thousands of Subject Matter Expert (SME) executives and entrepreneurs who assist clients in achieving long term success and sustainable growth. Our foundational philosophy is a commitment to honesty and integrity first, with a long term approach to partnership.

There are no new business problems.
There are only better, smarter and faster ways to solve them.

Recent Keynote Addresses:
Winning Negotiations, Leadership and Culture, Dynamic Business Growth.

Brett Potts, Managing Director and CEO

EMAIL BRETT

Dealmaker, Growth Expert, Turnaround Executive

Above all, Brett is an expert and highly trusted guide to business owners and top executives. In addition to leading many successful consulting engagements and financial transactions, he has personally coached more than a dozen C-Level executives, from the startup level to multi-billion dollar enterprises, in Sales, Leadership and Presentation skills. He continues to deliver high impact Keynote Addresses on favorite topics such as: Negotiations, Culture and Mergers & Acquisitions.

Brett’s career began as a U.S. Navy Officer charged with leading men in the inspection, search and seizure of contraband weapons and oil on merchant ships in the Arabian Gulf. He later guided a U.S. Navy Destroyer as Navigator on a western Pacific deployment. While still in the Navy, he launched his first business, a surfboard manufacturer called FDS, which he later sold to help pay for two advanced degrees in business. Following his MBA, he led a successful consulting project with Intel Corporation, then was recruited and hired to effect turnarounds of several failing divisions at Cintas Corporation, including their largest U.S. branch.

Since forming Coast Practical, Brett has served as CEO, COO or CFO of multiple diverse businesses and led the Coast Plating Group to a successful sale and ownership exit in 2014. He continues to periodically accept executive roles, and is active as a licensed investment banker at the Los Angeles Broker/Dealer, NewCap Partners.

Brett is an avid surfer and skier and loves spending time with his wife and children in their adopted hometown, Huntington Beach, CA.

Services

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Advanced Business Training

In one word, our training is Practical. And our results are extraordinary – we simply do not offer any course material we have not implemented ourselves within our clients.

Coast Practical has longstanding partnerships with Dale Carnegie Training, Color Accounting, Benchmark Training, Ideal Outcomes and many other organizations.

Brett Potts is a certified Dale Carnegie ™ Senior Trainer. All of the Leadership, Presentations and Sales training Coast Practical conducts is through a licensed Dale Carnegie Training franchise or reseller.

Our team regularly delivers world class training seminars, workshops and keynote addresses on a variety of other topics, including Scenario-based Negotiations, Sexual Harassment and Assault Prevention and Diversity and Inclusion.

Through recent partnerships, we have expanded service offerings to Corporate Culture, Organizational Change Management, Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Finance, and U.S. Fiduciary Law. If we do not offer the curricula you desire, we are pleased to offer referrals to quality sources within our network.

Online Course & Event Production

In this new era of Online Face-to-Face Learning, we have an unprecedented opportunity to support job growth through continual learning. Do you offer a curriculum or learning environment to adults? If you wish to create an engaging, immersive, online face-to-face experience for your students, Coast Practical can help. Online Production is a partnership with your existing instructors, using any Video Conferencing Platform (examples include: Zoom ™, WebEx ™, MS Teams ™, Adobe Connect ™ ). We provide hands on, real time technical support and ensure an engaging, world class learning environment. With thousands of Very Satisfied online adult learners in 2020 alone, our team of 30 Online Producers, familiar with every current Online Learning/Video Conferencing Platform is READY NOW to assist you.

Strategic Growth Consulting

Coast Practical’s core business is the growth of your business. We work with business ownership and top executive leaders to develop major objectives, such as the launch of a new division, a pivot into a new market or key metrics for acquiring other businesses. In one recent example, Brett and other Coast Practical executives took over the reins of a struggling metal finishing operation in Southern California. The team made two acquisitions in quick succession, one for $21 million and another for $5 million, enabling the sale of the group for nearly $90 million. In another recent example, two Coast Practical executives worked directly with the family ownership of a multi-billion Japanese conglomerate to ideate and launch a new division. In just 26 months, the business grew from an idea on a napkin to $14 million of annual revenue.

C-Level Executive Coaching

In 2015, Coast Practical team members completed our first C-Level Executive Coaching programs. Brett was reluctant to enter this business because he had mixed experiences with executive coaching during his tenure as an executive. His reluctance was a mistake. Our engagements, from the homebuilder CEO with $14 million in revenue to the Fortune 500 CFO, have met with exceptional success.

Our coaching foundations lies in human psychology, Marine Corps Officer training, the United States Naval Academy’s Center for Ethics and Leadership and the timeless philosophies of Dale Carnegie, Stephen Covey, Marshall Goldsmith and Tony Hsieh.

The simplest way to explain our approach is that we help clients step out of their own way. First, we engage in deep 1-on-1 interpersonal discovery, in order to understand the goals and motivations, whether hidden or in plain sight, of the client.Then, we recite these goals and motivations, as we understand them, back to the client.If revision is necessary, we revise together. Finally, we set clear goals and milestones and leverage best practice systems to accomplish the goals and surpass the milestones.

Client Successes

Dale Carnegie Training helps improve the performance of organizations by improving the performance of their people. Coast Practical has been supporting more than ten Dale Carnegie franchises across the U.S. with advisory services and world class training support for over a decade.

www.dalecarnegie.com

Daito Corporation is a closely-held Japanese conglomerate with over $1.5 B U.S. in revenue. Working directly with a board member and several key executives, Coast Practical ideated the business strategy and market entry tactics for their newest division, a parking technology business called Creva. More to come!

Valence Surface Technologies (formerly Coast Plating) is now the largest independently-held aerospace metal finishing company in the United States. Coast Practical worked with Coast Plating to develop a framework for successful acquisitions, improved business development and led the sale of the Coast Plating Group to Trive Capital in 2014.

valencesurfacetech.com

TogetherWeServed.com is the world’s largest and most complete military heritage networking website, with over 1.4 million military and former military members. Coast Practical is engaged in organic growth initiatives and has represented TWS through several high profile public appearances and engagements.

www.togetherweserved.com

CSL Plating is a metal finishing company providing services primarily to Aerospace and Semiconductor “Primes” such as Boeing and Flextronics, as well as 2nd Tier manufacturers contracted to the Primes. They’re engaged in leading both organic and inorganic growth initiatives at this company.