By Tricia Schwennesen
Dan Diehl has a knack for unraveling complicated communication - or perhaps it’s better described as the ability to simplify complex concepts.
It is a skill he honed early in his career first with Best Buy, then Valero Energy Corp., and later the oil and energy company’s retail spinoff, CST Brands. Part project manager, part IT guy, Diehl’s real gift is in listening to others, identifying gaps, problems or challenges, and then translating those obstacles into something others can understand and help resolve.
“That is when the fun begins,” he said. That’s when he can focus on finding and implementing a solution. That strategy has proven successful for Diehl for over 20 years and has taken him from Best Buy, to Valero, to CST, to now owning and operating two small businesses.
In spring 2018, Diehl and his wife, Jenny, bought the 100-acre River Bend Ranch in Durango, Colorado, taking it on as an event and wedding venue. Then last year, Diehl diversified their interests with the purchase of a solar company, Flatrock Solar.
Diehl credits his success in part to the University of the Incarnate Word’s former Adult Degree Completion Program (ADCaP), now known as the UIW School of Professional Studies (SPS). He graduated in 2009 with a degree in Finance with an emphasis in banking. The program, geared toward busy working professionals offered eight-week courses in the evenings. Diehl said the flexible schedule made it possible for him to earn a bachelor’s degree and get ahead in his career. “It took five or six years,” he said. “By the time I completed [the program] and graduated I found I was really happy where I was. I never pursued a role outside the IT department.”
A humble journey
Diehl launched his career with tech retail chain Best Buy in 1999. His plan until then was to earn a college degree, but after a year of college in Minnesota and exhausting his scholarship money, he opted to work and pay as he studied.
In 2001, Diehl and his wife moved to San Antonio where he landed a job - first on a three-month contract and later full-time - with Valero Energy Corporation.
Once in San Antonio, Diehl said, he found ADCaP, which was appealing because it worked around his developing career at Valero, where he also benefited from a tuition reimbursement program.
“College was really important,” he said. “It was a critical component, and I felt pressure, ‘Hey, if I wanted to grow and improve, I needed that.’”
As Diehl’s family grew, he and his wife decided to make a move in 2013 to San Francisco. At the time, CST Brands was splitting off from Valero and was working to implement a new phone system and invest in other technologies that would make working remotely possible.
“I became the guinea pig,” he said, “to see if CST Brands would allow, or enable, workers to work from home. This was really an experiment, and we were trying to figure out if it worked. It was a bit of a trailblazing effort.”
Diehl said they had no trouble assimilating to San Francisco. He and his wife made friends, they found a church and their children, Avery, now 18, and Graham, 16, continued to grow.
Even so, the couple also never intended to stay in San Francisco permanently. "We just never imagined leaving San Antonio," said Diehl.
A new adventure
After five years, the couple started talking about returning to San Antonio. They also took a trip to visit Jenny’s sister in Colorado, where they bid on a bank foreclosure.
“Every time we’d come it was sunny,” he said. “Those kinds of winters I could handle.”
He said they were looking for a slower pace and didn’t care where they moved if he could listen to the radio all day and not hear a traffic report.
“We saw a lot of beauty and a lot of opportunity,” Diehl said.
As they drove to San Antonio for a visit, they learned in Jolly, Texas, that Diehl had won the bid. It enabled the couple to move, and later decide exactly where they wanted to live. About six months later they bought River Bend Ranch.
“We saw the potential that it had, and we decided to go for it,” Diehl said. Ten days after buying the ranch, they hosted their first wedding. Six weeks after they bought the property, they were hosting helicopters used to fight the large 416 and Burrow Fire Complex, two wildfires that merged and burned over 50,000 acres just north of Durango.
"The `heli-base' on the ranch housed six helicopters and about 50 to 60 people over eight weeks," Diehl said.
Diehl said that in the first summer they learned a great deal about hosting events and fighting fires. He and his wife would coordinate with fire officials to avoid helicopters flying over wedding ceremonies and often guests would take selfies with the helicopters.
“It really was an educational summer for us,” he said, adding the fire officials told him their job was not to put the fire out, winter would take care of that, but to save lives and structures.
“It was just eye-opening to me,” he said. Another learning experience was the COVID-19 pandemic, he said. Wedding parties reduced their sizes, and many weddings moved outside to observe good social distancing practices.
“We didn’t cancel any [weddings] but we did have some that canceled,” he said. “We didn’t want to force that.”
The pandemic also made Diehl consider the family’s investment and financial wellbeing. “It might be good for us to diversify,” he said he remembered thinking. In 2023, an opportunity presented itself. A local, established solar company was put up for sale.
“I understood business ownership with my background in banking and finances,” he said. “I understood the numbers game with my background in IT and project management. I understood efficiencies, but I needed to know about solar – to understand it.”
A bright future
One year into owning Flatrock Solar, Diehl said it is providing an alternative income stream, and he is still learning. He hired someone whose expertise is solar to learn all he could including the installation process. His winter project, he said, will be to get a new solar website.
Today, River Bend Ranch hosts on average 75 weddings and events per year. The ranch is also home to a day camp for children with special needs. Plus, Animas Valley Church has been meeting there for the past five years. The ranch employs full-time staff and part-time event crew members.
Diehl said he’s still learning so much. His effective communication skills are still at work managing the team at the ranch and learning all he can about solar. And though his journey has been full of unexpected twists and turns, he's grateful for the opportunities he's had to grow, and the education that prepared him to take them on.
“Those shifts (in life) when we make them can be scary,” he said. “I’ve always been fortunate that when we do them it has been better. There is so much that we do in life that we don’t envision for ourselves.”