Leadership Matters

Follow the reading habits of a local million-dollar tech startup founder

From a police officer to the global C-Suite to starting his own company, Casey Marquette remains steadfast on one get and stay ahead factor: reading leadership books.


  • Manatee-Sarasota
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Casey Marquette, having run IT security and related programs and departments for Fortune 100 companies, doesn’t have the kind of resume that looks like he would need to start from scratch, driving across the country in a van. 

Yet that’s what he did, in 2022, with some heady success in building what’s now a nearly $8 million AI-infused tech employee recruitment business. Along the way, Marquette, who lives on Anna Maria Island, has refined and enhanced what he says is his No. 1 leadership technique: reading leadership books. Leadership books are the only books he reads, he says, and he does it often. His list of all-time favorites include best sellers by leadership gurus like John Maxwell and Jack Canfield. 

“No matter what you want to be in life, someone has already done it and been great at it,” Marquette says. “You just need to read about it.”


Drive all night 

At 49 years old, Marquette has essentially already had two careers, First, he was a police officer in the Cincinnati, Ohio area. Then he got into Corporate America. He was director of security operations for Johnson & Johnson, where he built a security operations center for 260 J&J subsidiaries worldwide. After that he was deputy chief information security officer for CVS Health. His most recent big corporate gig was implementing new security protocols for global IT consulting giant Cognizant. In that role he managed a team of 225 professionals across 20 countries, work that enabled 200,000 employees in India to work remotely during the pandemic. 

Casey Marquette
Photo by Isabel Epstein

In May 2022 Marquette, who relocated to the Sarasota-Bradenton area from New Jersey, launched his own company, Covenant Technologies. It’s an employee recruiting firm with one core goal: use AI technology to improve the often substandard results in helping companies, especially in IT and cybersecurity, find and retain great employees. “I’m dead set on changing this industry,” Marquette says. 

But, back to the van, the early days were meager. “I had nothing,” he says, save for his Anna Maria Island house. “If I didn’t make money, literally this house wouldn't be mine.”

Marquette took a photo of himself in the garage of that house and called it his “Jeff Bezos picture,” hoping one day into the future, like the Amazon founder, he will have a photo to memorialize the early days of Covenant. Then off he went, from north New Jersey to San Francisco, Phoenix to Pensacola, in a Class B van dubbed the Covenant Command Center. He drove 8,000 miles in a month, he says, using his contacts developed at past jobs to get meetings. He slept in the van in Walmart and Cracker Barrel parking lots.

The company lost $175,000 the first year. But the concept quickly caught on. The firm now handles direct-hires, contract-to-hires and contract staffing for a variety of IT and cybersecurity clients. The key to the model, Marquette says, is twofold: it uses a fine-tuned AI software model to sift through resumes and applications on one side. On the other side, the firm works with the hiring manager to fine-tune what roles the company needs filled. “I’m always looking for ways to change the industry,” he says. 

The model obviously resonates: after the first year’s loss, it did $5.8 million in revenue in 2023 and $7.7 million last year, up 32.75%. It has 8 employees. 


Read all night 

The first leadership book Marqutte recommends is “Turn the Ship Around! How to Create Leadership at Every Level.” The book is written by U.S. Naval Academy graduate and former nuclear submarine captain David Marquet. (Marquet, who worked for the Pentagon after a three-year stint leading the USS Santa Fe, has lived in the Sarasota area; I met him in 2012, when I interviewed him after the book came out.) 

Marquet, in his book and our interview, says he learned from many experiences on the USS Sante Fe that great leaders should value true autonomy over false empowerment, and seek to create a culture of doers, not followers.

Marquette says a big takeaway he got from “Turn this Ship Around!” is the power of leading with intent — both on his own and with his team. With the team, Marquette says his employees now know, based on the book, that he doesn’t want questions about what to do. He wants intentions.

Casey Marquette drove 8,000 miles in a month across the country to get customers for his startup, Covenant Technologies.
Courtesy image

“They will send me an email that says I intend to, … and they know if I don’t respond, to go ahead and do it,” he says, adding that he wouldn’t put them in that position if he didn’t believe in them. “We get 100 times more done than what other companies get done in the same amount of time this way.” 

On the internal intention side, the high-energy, charismatic Marquette says he learned from that book to value his time in a highly-disciplined way that is closely aligned with his goals. “Every hour in my mind, I know what I want to get done in that hour. That mindset is how our entire company is run,” he says. “If I get sent a calendar invite that's not aligned with my goals, I don’t accept it.”


Let them

Another key leadership book for Marquette is John Maxwell’s “25 Ways to Win with People: How to Make Others Feel Like a Million Bucks.” This book has helped Marquette be comfortable in just about any environment with people, not just clients. 

Maxwell’s way No. 2, for example, also known as the 30-second rule, is when you connect with anyone, for anything, say something encouraging in the first half-minute — while avoiding talking about yourself. In other words, give them attention, affirmation and appreciation. “Everyone wants to talk about themselves,” Marquette says. “Let them and they will love you.” 

A third leadership book Marquette says has been key to his success is “The Success Principles: How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be,” by Jack Canfield. The theme of that book, for Marquette, is to focus on what is in your control, regardless of the obstacle or situation. He says people fail when they blame others for their problems. “No matter what happens in your life that went wrong, when assessing it start with looking at yourself,” he says. “Ninety-nine percent of people start the other way.”

 

author

Mark Gordon

Mark Gordon is the managing editor of the Business Observer. He has worked for the Business Observer since 2005. He previously worked for newspapers and magazines in upstate New York, suburban Philadelphia and Jacksonville.

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