Nickolas DePrisco

• Directed day-to-day operations in the Los Angeles metroplex by spearheading implementation of short-term and long-term strategies to achieve business plan and profitability goals. For example, initiating vendor negotiations to cut specific operational overhead expense by ~60% month-over-month, leading to projected savings of 200-250k yearly in LA alone, even more considered nationwide.
• Managed scheduling, training and inventory control.
• Improved morale and management communication by creating employee recognition and rewards practices.
• Developed initiatives for process improvement and reviewed and assessed ongoing operations. For example, looked at our current property onboarding process & cut our timelines from 5-7 days to 1-2 days within first 30 days on the job, savings us a projected 100k+ yearly.
• Conducted employee observations and documented findings.
• Empowered employees to take ownership of their responsibilities, leading to increased accountability and improved performance outcomes.
• Conducted regular performance reviews, identifying areas for improvement and developing action plans to address them.
• Developed and maintained relationships with external vendors and suppliers. Including developing new partnerships that 35-45% decrease in cleaning overhead expenses.
• Created corrective actions based on adverse KPI trends. Acted & successfully led initiatives to increase KPI stability.
• Managed budgets effectively, consistently delivering projects on-time and within financial constraints.
• Supervised operations staff and kept employees compliant with company policies and procedures.
• Handled staff training initiatives aimed at upskilling the workforce to meet dynamic industry demands.
• Achieved higher employee retention rates by fostering a positive work environment and providing opportunities for professional growth.
• Negotiated contracts with vendors and suppliers to obtain best pricing and terms.
• Analyzed and controlled materials, supplies and equipment operational expenses.
• Crafted operations best practices using audits and project management team feedback.
• Anticipated and tracked operational and tactical risks to provide strategic solutions.
• Produced SOPs to document workplace procedures and optimize productivity through standardization.
• Tracked and replenished inventory to maintain par levels.
• Built strong operational teams to meet process and production demands.

Managed the Market Launches for the Houston, Dallas, and Tampa markets.

Accomplishments:

• Successfully lead the building out of a new Launch playbook tailored to an asset-light approach that resulted in a launch process that was 3-5x faster & cheaper than any previous market launch in company history.
• Mentored & trained new Market Launchers successfully, giving them the tools to launch their own market within months.
• Established market strategies that met or exceeded budget numbers.
• Collaborated with management team to develop program budgets and monitored operations for compliance with regulatory and company guidelines.
• Built out nationwide partnerships that allowed faster & cheaper growth in all markets, matured & newly launched.

What I did:

- Willing traveled & relocated for 2-4 months at a time with a tight deadline & pre-built game plan to efficiently launch the market by its deadline.
- Successfully persevered through the ambiguous challenges of a market launch
- Lead the recruitment, management, training, and mentorship of the Operations Managers & Associates for launches with the goal of an autonomous market ran by the local operations team within months.
- Assisted in recruiting & hiring of Installations Manager & trained them to fully handle property onboarding in the local market
- Performed regulation & tax research to allow us to establish the firm as a legal business entity in each state or city; including industry taxes
- Sourced and purchase vans per launch
- Sourced & managed vendor partnerships key to market operations (ex. contractors, laundry, housekeeping, photographers, etc)
- Sourced & signed leases on office & warehouse spaces built with short term flexibility to allow us to move into new spaces we quickly grow.
- Received & inventoried 30-50 units worth of furnishings & supplies per market; purchasing all of the market supplies & technology for each market
- Assisted in partnership efforts which includes but is not limited to working with perspective home owners & property management companies, often fully representing the face of the company in these new cities & states.
- Moved into & onboarded 30-50 units which includes but is not limited to furniture installation, data entry for administrative aspects of property onboarding (ex. check-in instructions & property data collection, internet/utility account set up & accounting, etc), managing vendors for property onboarding (painters, photographers, contractors etc), use of AutoCad for Arizona based interior designers, and manage labor budgets while hitting very aggressive timelines
- Oversaw & ensured proper market stability & performance while prepping for the next launch

Accomplishments:

• Early in the role I created a new check-in process via "visual guides" that resulted in very high check-in ratings, thus allowing local markets to concentrate efforts on other various aspects of market performance. This "visual guide" process was scaled market wide & eventually transitioned into our in-house system & guest facing virtual front desk. I assisted our engineering team in the spearheading of the creation of the in-house visual guide
• Built out a new Activations team structure that allowed markets to grow faster than ever
• Built out a new property activations process that allowed markets to grow just as fast except cheaper with less labor overhead & additional schedule flexibility
• Created 2 new positions that improved local market performance & employee satisfaction

What I did:

Lead the Activations Department

- Managed, hired, fired, and laid off Operations Associates, with the largest number of people under me at one time at 17.

- Coached Operations Associates to become better members of the business, help them grow their careers at Wander Jaunt, and become better people in their respective communities.

- Set up our daily/weekly/monthly schedules to ensure we are onboarding our new properties as efficiently as possible using Monday.com.

- Managed our local warehouse by overseeing our day to day operation that included a single warehouse associate. This dealt with ordering products, returning products, and ensuring we always had what we needed before we need it as well as maintaining a clean and organized warehouse.

- Worked cross-functionally with our interior design, procurement, and customer service team out of Phoenix, Arizona on everything from guest issues to warehouse ops via slack, Gmail, or from phone.

Manage Vendor Relations

- Maintained relationships with various vendors to ensure they give us top-notch quality when needed

- Changed the way we price our labor for paint contractors leading to an almost 40% decrease in paint cost

Assist in Sourcing Efforts

- Spoke to potential partners on their interest in working with us then pushed them to our sales team

- Developed ideas to implement on our sales team to continue to push our growth

- Walked potential future Wander Jaunts to ensure quality and location

- Took part in formal & informal meetings with potential partners and current partners for everything from a friendly check-in to a group sales pitch

Assist in overall operations

- Kept an eye on our overall quality and creating needed projects as I see fit

- Always pushing innovation to ensure we never got complacent in how we did things across all departments and markets

- Helped develop our newly added leadership into various roles (Housekeeping manager, Maintenance Manager, and Office managers)

Lead the Activations team

- Scheduled our day to day for 3-4 different teams of 3 people to ensure we onboard our new properties in the most efficient manner possible

Coordinating with Contractors

- scheduled contractors such as handymen, painters, and photographers

Built out processes and procedures

- Often left without much structure or guidance, I was leaned on to build these out for the day to day operations not just inclusive to only the Activations Team

Executed Projects for the betterment of both the Guest Experience and the Local Operations

- Created a new tech-friendly check-in process that heavily benefited our ratings across all markets thus leading to increased revenue

- Heavily revised the system for onboarding of new properties

- I was a key early piece in launching the Austin market, the first market outside of the company base in Phoenix, Arizona. I joined the company as the first member of the Operations team that handled everything but had moved into a focus on the management of the onboarding new of properties. I

- I started on WanderJaunt property #1 in the Austin market and helped build out procedures and standards while growing into a leadership role.

- Cold calling local businesses nationwide in order to create a partnership in which we would manage their social media and front line pages such as yelp and google.

- Worked residential remodeling & beautification of a prominent Tech company's CEO. This This included putting together million-dollar art pieces in week long projects, restoration of unique home styles, as well as simple tasks such as cleaning and moving furniture.

- As an intern, I was being prepared to become a plant operations manager coming out of college. I went to most of their operations management meetings for all of the Argos Dallas Metroplex locations. During the internship, the scope of my work was used as a fleet manager, tasked with communicating with operations managers as well dispatch and the mechanic shops in order to send off truck drivers to needed locations. This lead to an increase in productivity and decrease in payroll.