Ozarks Profile: Cal LeMon

Tell us about your company.

Executive Enrichment is a corporate training and consulting firm. The bottom line of our business is to improve the bottom line of our customers. We teach our clients how to save money through a specific set of interpersonal skills. These skills include how to say it the first time and be understood, how to cut out the games adults play like "you cross me and I will make you pay," how to represent what you are thinking and feeling without hacking people off, and how to think and act like a leader.

We also provide organizational development assessment and consultation. Our latest product, "The Anatomically Correct Organization," provides our clients with a clear appraisal of whether or not the right people are in the right places in their organization.

What is your job?

My job in the firm is to give direction to five other professional trainers/consultants who design and present client-specific interventions. We work as a team to make sure the clients are making progress and money as a result of having us in the building. I also provide most of the sequential leadership development programs for our clients. These programs normally are presented every month for a period of one year.

What drew you to this career?

I started my professional life in the full-time ministry; therefore, communicating and serving people, through Executive Enrichment, is just another expression of ministry for me.

What are the challenges you face in your work?

Staying ahead of the needs of our clients. We have to anticipate what stressors like upgraded technology, economic chaos and acquisition-mania will mean for the way people are working with each other.

Tell us about your family.

My wife, Kathy, is a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice in Springfield and also is on staff at Hammons Heart Institute. My oldest daughter, Daphne, is an OBGYN physician at Ferrell-Duncan, and my youngest daughter, Niki, is a manager at Halls Department Store in Kansas City. Both of our daughters are married to outstanding men (whose names escape me right now!) My wife and I became grandparents of Nicholas William 19 months ago, and we have about 3 million pictures to prove it.

What other careers have you considered?

I have thought about becoming a Top Gun Navy pilot, forest ranger in the Grand Canyon, librarian, tour bus driver, vocal star in Branson. But probably, after my career is finished, become a greeter at Wal-Mart.