A lesson from his father taught Alex Calderone the importance of not looking too long before leaping.

Given the chance to leave accounting firm Deloitte in the 1980s to partner with noted corporate turnaround specialist Van Conway in a fledgling business, Fred Calderone opted against.

“My father had a good income and a relatively safe career, and he decided against taking that entrepreneurial plunge,” said the 39-year-old managing director of Calderone Advisory Group LLC in Birmingham. “As Van became wildly successful, my father looked back on his decision and asked himself, ‘What if?’”

So, after working for 10 years for others — accounting firm KPMG, Conway’s company, Conway Mackenzie, and then in the casino industry — Calderone struck out on his own. The turnaround firm he opened alone in 2014 now consists of seven professionals and and expects $3 million in revenue in 2020.

Clients have ranged from Romulus tarp manufacturer Detroit Tarpaulin and Repair Shop, with less than $5 million in revenue, to Radio Shack, in connection with its second bankruptcy filing in 2017, Calderone said

Among the most meaningful assignments was a failing Gladwin County plastics extruder, Loose Plastics Inc. A reorganization saved more than 100 jobs, Calderone said.

“That was special to me, because Gladwin County doesn’t have a lot of large employers,” he said. “I spent two years with them. Every time I drove up there, I thought, ‘What if this doesn’t work? All those people I see in the factory, if I can’t fix this, what happens to them?’”

Calderone, who holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Michigan State University, also worked on Pontiac General Hospital’s Chapter 11 reorganization.

“I do love what I do,” he said. “The field is very fast-moving. Most of the time, we’re dealing with crises that present opportunities if we can get through them.”
The industry also presents difficulties.

“Sometimes, (clients) get angry,” he said. “Sometimes, people cry and sometimes people don’t trust us. The job can be a 60-to-70-hour-a-week “pressure cooker,” he said.

“(But) every time I come into a situation where I’m able to impact people’s lives, that tends to be rewarding for me,” he said.