Background
Dave Sabey met The Pacific Institute®‘s co-founder, Lou Tice, when he was 13 years old.“He came to my locker room, put his arm on my shoulder and asked, ‘Dave, have you thought about football in high school?’ I told him I had. He asked me, ‘How about in college?’ I told him I hadn’t. He asked, ‘Have you thought about getting a football scholarship to college? If you come and play on my team and do what I tell you, you will get a scholarship,’ and then he walked away. That conversation was very powerful for me!” Fast forward four-plus decades. Dave Sabey is CEO of Sabey Corporation, which provides critical environment space and management services to business, government, science and healthcare. Founded in 1971 in Seattle, the highly successful company now encompasses real-estate development, construction, data centers and essential technology services for healthcare and life-sciences clients.
“One of the key fundamentals of The Pacific Institute® is that you can do anything if you set your mind to it. Our customers come to us with difficult problems, and they find us to be optimistic, ‘can-do’ people as opposed to ‘can’t do that’ people. There is no negativity in our system. That positive outlook is a powerful tool. It is across our system, and it is infectious: when we’re positive, our customers feel positive.”
Challenge
The Sabey Corporation is a diverse company with initiatives moving rapidly forward on multiple fronts. The challenge is to keep visions aligned and an environment of innovative thinking flourishing.“More than ever, the ability to set goals and organize around common themes is important. That vocabulary and algorithm is more important than ever to keep your compass pointed in the right direction. We’re so busy, we are careful about who we hire on in our company, but we must grow; our customers demand it. We need to make sure our team is organised intellectually, and we present a common face to our market. The Pacific Institute® helps us with that.”
Experience
Sabey and his team utilize The Pacific Institute® curriculum in a variety of ways.“Education about how your mind works is a continuous project because we all evolve. We use the program in our HR department as way to train new employees as to the Sabey way of thinking, which is really The Pacific Institute® way of thinking. I’ve had our people take the seminars. They’ve sent people into our organization. We change how we present the information, using the various multimedia capabilities that The Pacific Institute® offers, just for variety. The core message is the same regardless of the vehicle.” Goal setting is one part of the curriculum that resonates with Dave Sabey.“The Pacific Institute® comes into a company and helps individual members understand the importance of goal setting. Lou set for me the possibility of goals in junior high when all of sudden he said, ‘How about college and a scholarship?’ It was not in my thoughts, but why not? He implanted a goal in my mind, and I began to get comfortable with it, and started thinking, ‘Yes, I can achieve that goal,’ and I did. The Pacific Institute® gives you the authority to make goals and shows you how to accomplish them.”
Outcome
“What The Pacific Institute® has taught me is a very big part of the reason for our success of the last 43 years. We certainly wouldn’t have bought a 32-story building in New York at the bottom of the market if we hadn’t believed in the power and importance of goal setting. Having the ability to identify and stop negative self-talk is really important too - to stop talking yourself out of things. We’ve over and over again run contrary to markets. We do things that are not in vogue. In June 2009 we made our biggest acquisition ever because of the confidence The Pacific Institute® gives us that what we are doing is right.” Learn more:insidesabey.sabey.com