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Searching for success that REALLY matters: the “luke warm” years. He began to focus on what he was most comfortable with: business. In no time at all, he and Joanne built the largest residential security business in New England, with 40 dealers in six states and sales in excess of $9 million. He integrated his new belief system into his work life and made God a part of his life...A SMALL PART. Soon, he moved to Maryland to become vice president of franchise sales for the national distributor, and in no time at all he was named chief operating officer with 134 franchisees and $25 million in sales. "Here I was – BARELY a high school graduate…and I was helping to design and develop the franchising faculty guide for University of Maryland's first ever franchising course. You didn’t need to tell me I was a big deal…I just KNEW it." Puleo was a feature story in Success Magazine and was an invited speaker at several conventions and universities on topics of entrepreneurship, customer service, and creative marketing. He helped to assemble a team of people to purchase an Italian made sled & sponsor an Olympic hopeful on the USA Bobsled team. He also joined the Board of Directors for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Washington D.C., where he still serves as Emeritus Director. It was during this time, Dennis says some of his old habits began to creep back into his life. A respected and admired friend took him aside one day and warned him not to use vulgar language in front of his boys during a business conversation. “I was unbelievably embarrassed and felt like a fool. I just brushed it off, quietly avoided him, and tried to act as though it never happened.” At age 52, Dennis and Joanne sold their home and bought a 50-foot Hatteras Motor Yacht to cruise from Maine to Florida...a three-year dream vacation. One day before they pulled away from their dock, in front of a group of local boaters, his dock master said, “I saw you in church Sunday. I didn’t know you were a Christian!" "My heart sank...I had lost my first love, and I knew it. Those familiar patterns of sin (selfishness, arrogance, and pride) had very easily worked their way back into my life; or as my daughter would say... I had forgotten who I was. "It was becoming apparent to me that I was failing in my attempt to be a Lone Ranger Christian. Somehow I had managed to become luke warm. It was like falling out of love." But even this event didn’t change Puleo’s life style. He brushed off the experience, fired up Interlude's diesel engines, and cruised the intra-coastal waterways for the next three years.
Click the link at page bottom to
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Dennis and John Walsh team up for kids
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Dennis sponsors USA Olympic
