Authentic Achievements with Special Guest Richard Walker
Empowering People to Do Their Best Work with Richard Walker
Episode Description:
In this inspiring episode of Authentic Achievements, our host, Kim-Adele Randall, sits down with Richard Walker, the dynamic CEO and co-founder of Quik! Richard’s entrepreneurial journey began at the age of 12, and since then, he has started over ten companies, hosted “The Customer Wins” podcast, authored two insightful books, and is a proud father of three boys. Richard’s mission is clear: to empower people to do their best work by simplifying and optimizing their workflows. In this episode, Richard shares his insights on entrepreneurship, leadership, and personal development and how he has applied these principles to his own life and career.
Before Quik! ‘s inception in 2002, Richard sculpted a diverse career as a financial advisor with Financial Network Investment Corp and a business consultant with Arthur Andersen. At Quik!, he spearheads a revolution in how people manage paperwork, liberating them to concentrate more on their core tasks and passions. This episode delves deep into Richard’s indomitable entrepreneurial spirit, unwavering resilience, and strategies for navigating and thriving in the ever-evolving business landscape.
Key Topics and Questions:
- The Entrepreneurial Spark: What made you want to be an entrepreneur, and what drives you to succeed?
- Overcoming Adversity: Can you share one of your company’s history’s darkest or most challenging times and how you overcame it?
- Staying True to Your Vision: How do you stay true to your vision and course when facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles?
- Measuring Success: As an entrepreneur and founder of a company, how do you measure success for yourself? How do you know if you are successful?
Guest Bio: Richard Walker is a serial entrepreneur and an unwavering leader and innovator. His fervour for propelling others to excel in their work has driven Quik! ‘s success and growth. His diverse background in finance and business consulting has endowed him with the unique ability to craft solutions that simplify intricate processes, all while staying true to his unwavering vision.
Useful Links:
- Learn more about Quik! and their innovative solutions at quickforms.com
- Connect with Richard Walker on LinkedIn: Richard Walker
Call to Action: If you enjoyed this episode and found Richard’s insights valuable, please like, share, rate, and review it on your favourite podcast platform. Your support helps us bring you more inspiring stories and valuable insights. Remember to subscribe to an episode of Authentic Achievements with Kim-Adele Randall, where we continue bringing you the best in entrepreneurship, leadership, and personal development.
Please tune in and get ready to be inspired by Richard Walker’s journey and his incredible work at Quik! In this episode, Richard will share his unique insights on entrepreneurship, leadership, and personal development, offering valuable lessons and strategies to apply to your, unwavering leader, life and career.
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Transcript:
[Music]
0:05[Applause] hello and welcome to this episode of authentic achievements where it’s my
0:12absolute Delight to be joined by The Fabulous Richard Walker Rich welcome good morning good afternoon good
0:18evening to whoever is listening thank you for having me Kim oh I’m so excited about this I know how much fun I had in
0:25our last conversation but before we get straight in there and stuck in let me share a little bit more about you with
0:30our audience so Richard is the CEO and co-founder of quick he started over 10
0:36companies the first one being the age of 12 he’s the host of the customer wins podcast an author of two books and a
0:43father to three boys he empowers people to do their best work and prior to starting quick Richard was a financial
0:49adviser with the financial Network investment Corp and a business consultant with Arthur Anderson he
0:55started quick in 2002 to help people spend less time processing paperwork and more time doing what they do best I love
1:02that because we do get as a business owner we do get stuck doing paperwork instead of doing the stuff where we
1:09actually add value to clients don’t we I know and I always ask people who loves filling out forms and nobody will raise
1:16their hands so I think we have something to solve yeah it’s so true isn’t it it’s
1:21like we don’t like we don’t like f Force we don’t like standing in qes and yet we find ourselves doing both of them all of the time um which is weird so before we
1:29get started can you tell me a little bit about your journey so far I love the fact that your first company was 12 you’re GNA have to tell us about that
1:35yeah so man I I I come from a background of nothing I mean we were very very poor we were on welfare when I was a kid and
1:43I really wanted to get a very expensive radio controlled car and so I started
1:48saving my money at age eight and I always look for opportunities to make money sell candy bars rake leaves
1:54whatever it was and my neighbor his son and I would play a lot my neighbor was a supplier to Physicians so all the
2:01medical supplies and he came out one day with a length of latex tubing you see it
2:06in hospitals he put a pen tip you know retractable ballpoint pen took the tip of it put it in one end of that hose
2:13tied a knot in the other end took a cone-shaped nozzle put the pen in it and blew it up with water and it squirted 30
2:20feet so back in the early 80s when you’re choice was water balloons or
2:26squirt guns that shooted shoot sorry shot 5 feet 30 feet was amazing so they
2:31were called water weenies which is a funny name and at the end of us playing he took them back and I’m like well wait
2:38a minute all the other kids in the neighborhood want it well I knew he had in his shed a roll of this tubing and I
2:44said to him how much for that roll of tubing and he told me a price I ran home broke open my piggy bank gave him the
2:50money and then I destroyed every pen in my house and I went around my neighborhood and started selling these water weenies sold out in a day went
2:58back bought another 25 ft of two tubing sold out in a week went camping sold out at the beach and suddenly realized we
3:05had this little cool business here and my uncle said Rich I’m doing the Fourth of July ceremonies um I’m running the
3:11whole event if you want to have a booth I’ll get you a booth so then I went I I
3:17made enough money that first summer to buy the RC car that I wanted it was a $300 car back then it’s like $1,200
3:23today and then my uncle says hey I can get you this booth and I go to my neighbor and say how much for a, feet of
3:30tubing and he says 300 bucks well I spent my 300 bucks and the best thing is
3:35I went to him and said would you trade me the thousand feet of tubing for my car for your kid’s birthday and he did
3:42it wow so now I had all the tubing I needed I wrote a letter to the scrypto Pen Company saying hey I’m doing a
3:48project would you give me sample pen tips they sent me a box of 5,000 at no cost and so now I had all the supplies
3:56we made a whole bunch of these um products we showed up by 7:00 a.m. we started selling by 1:00 p.m. we sold out
4:04uh I gave my brother some money I bought everybody dinner and I pocketed over $1,100 in that one day wow and it just
4:11struck me I’m like wow people will pay you for things they like if you have it and you can give it to them and I
4:18actually I took that money and saved it for another four years and bought my first car with it oh wow what Amazing
4:23Story say you started out to buy a car and it ended up also buying a car so
4:29stages of your life I love that I I love that that entrepreneurial spirit that was clearly in you from so long um but
4:36is what is that what made you want to be an entrepreneur what drives you to succeed you know I would say it’s a
4:42couple things one is that that experience we had of being very poor taught me a lot of things about what
4:48money is or what money isn’t and it it gave me this kind of hunger and thirst for I don’t want to be poor I I want to
4:55have more in life and and Kim I’ll tell you a simple story I remember being about 5 years old going to a laundromat
5:02with my mom seeing a woman drive up in a very nice car it was a Mercedes I loved
5:07cars so I was into that she comes into the back of the uh laundromat puts coins
5:13in a vending machine and pulls out a soda can and then leaves and I thought my God she is so wealthy because she
5:19could afford a soda which we weren’t allowed to have and I Associated that with the Mercedes so I thought man
5:26that’s what I want and I just had this feeling like I really would like to have more in life than where we were and the
5:33second thing was figuring out that people will pay you for something that you produce I started telling everybody
5:39I was 12 years old just about to turn 13 I said I’m going to be a millionaire by age 23 which did not happen by the way I
5:45did get my dream car uh by 23 but it it wasn’t it didn’t matter it was more just
5:51I had this Fuel and I’d say the third thing that really kind of pushed me was people saying no that’s not possible I’m
5:58like why what’s the American dream anyway why can’t you go build your own thing why can’t you be the person you
6:05want to be and I kept hearing no from people that no you’re not going to do that no that’s not achievable don’t
6:11don’t set such high goals because your expectations will be um won’t be met and you’ll be unhappy I’m like I don’t care
6:18I’m an optimist it doesn’t matter if I’m happy because I’m unhappy now being poor so why don’t I just keep trying to be
6:25better yeah I’d say those things those three things really struck me and have driven me for a long time I love that I
6:32love that you like you don’t let the no stop you because very often we do don’t we we let everybody else’s the naysayers
6:38tell us that it can’t be done um and yet actually it’s what we believe that matters it’s like if we believe it can
6:44be done then we’ll find a way of making um but you’ve got to I I I often think
6:51you’ve got to have the passion for what you’re doing it’s got to be greater than the than the fear of not getting there
6:58the fact that you just want to keep trying you know that’s actually the nature of change I I wrote a book on
7:04change and how to create change for yourself and one of the things I say to people is you have to have a
7:09motivational desire a desire stronger than the cost of the pain the pain to
7:15stay the same the pain to keep doing what you’ve been doing you you have to have a drive that’s bigger than that and
7:22this is why people fail out of the gym after the first three weeks of the Year their their pain is over you know
7:27whatever they’re not willing to go past it but to me it’s the same thing you have to be willing to accept the nose and the
7:34failures and the bumps in the road and just keep pushing and pushing because you have a bigger vision of what you want to get to I love that and it’s so
7:41true because actually when you know I often think life only really makes sense in the rear viiew mirror and when I look back at things go Ah that’s why that
7:49happened because of that whereas at the time when you’re going through them they don’t always make a lot of sense and I
7:55guess in business you know doesn’t always go swimmingly does it could you tell us about a time when it
8:01hasn’t gone so well and and actually how you overcame that how many times would you like to hear
8:10about I I’ll tell you one of the hardest parts in our business uh history um and
8:15this was in 2010 we in two early 2010 we took on a
8:21really big customer and big financially to us and we worked on this custom project for them for the whole year we
8:27kept serving our customers but we were building something with them that we thought we could take to Market later for other customers too so it was a
8:33worthwhile investment plus they were paying us very well in December early
8:38December of that year um I called them and said hey we’re ready to show you what we built and
8:44we’re ready to go into pilot phase with you and the response I got was that’s really great however our parent company
8:51just shut us down 350 people are losing their job for Christmas this year I was
8:57stunned I I mean we all were because now we were going to lose out on all this Revenue we had plus I mean we had just
9:05built this product and now we have no customer to take it to Market with so we entered 2011 going into a 40% decline in
9:14revenue and then another customer really big customer quit at the same time and it was just the life cycle they’ had
9:20been with us for six years it was just the life cycle so suddenly I’m facing a
9:2645 to 50% decline in Revenue how do you overcome that yeah yeah and so what we
9:32did is we said Okay first things first let’s not lose another customer we
9:38called every customer we talked to them we made sure they were happy satisfied Etc second we said how are we going to
9:45save money because we have to we had to cut staff which which was terrible we
9:50had to cut cost everywhere we could we had to reduce our pay wherever we could I I mean to the point of I got rid of a
9:57bottled water we we just didn’t have bottled water in the office anymore I got rid of a $5 a month fax service I
10:03mean just any Penny we could save yeah and and so now we were at a
10:08point where we had no ability to sell no salespeople no team we could only service our clients and so we said
10:15what’s our strategy going to be to grow our company and get out of this and so what I realized was if if we can’t build
10:22a sales team obviously I’ll go sell how can we get a sales team and we struck on the idea of forming Partnerships who
10:29could resell our product because then we could tap into their sales teams so we
10:34we stru started talking to potential Partners it took about five months for
10:39one of them to say yes and sign a deal and then it took about two years for them to produce Revenue but it was the
10:46strategy because you know two years later suddenly we get a $30,000 a month
10:51increase in our revenue and that was life-changing for us so yeah that that was a really really hard time and it was
10:58it was hard in so many ways because we had to say goodbye to people on our team
11:04and we had to just focus really really intently on who we were and what we were going to be but those that’s one of
11:10those times we could have easily just shut down the company and walked away and done something better with our lives
11:15yeah but but again back to that having that passion that’s greater and and yeah
11:20I can’t begin to imagine how it must have felt particularly losing members of the team and and the just just
11:27heartbreaking when when you know these things with these things happen but great that you actually managed to Pivot
11:33and find a way through so that you got to that you kind of grow it back but I mean that is a great example but I’m
11:39sure you’ve got plenty more of how do you stay true to your vision it when things seem to be
11:46insurmountable you know it’s a really good question Kim it’s a it’s a tough question because there’s a lot of
11:52different reasons people stay true to their Vision I I I guess I can distill it back to a few things that I want I
11:59started this company to empower myself to do my best work and I’ve never worked for another company where I could do
12:05everything I wanted to do I always felt like 50% utilized I’m like I’ve got more to give and they won’t let me so I need
12:13to be an entrepreneur that’s part of who I am that’s in my DNA second I felt a responsibility to my
12:20customers the customers who were with us were depending on us their revenue generating activities depended on my
12:26system operating and I had the strange negative superpower of upsetting 100,000
12:33people if I turned off my system so I didn’t want to do that either I didn’t want to disappoint the marketplace and
12:40really really fail them not just quit but fail them third is I had a
12:46commitment to my co-founder who’s my mom and I would be letting her down if I
12:52quit because this was her investment she was at retirement age we had to make
12:58this work um and I think just overall I believe in the vision of what we can do so to say
13:05one customer can put you out of business I think is dumb even though that was really painful I just wouldn’t want to
13:11tie my future to any one customer or one event I love that it’s it’s true is
13:18seeing the art of of the possible because we sometimes do um view things
13:23from much more um fatalistic Viewpoint we that’s one thing is going to be the
13:30end of everything and it’s like it it will only be the end of everything if you choose to let it if you chose
13:36instead to go no that isn’t going to be How This Ends there will be another way you will change How It Ends won’t you
13:43right right and I always Define failure as quitting you can have a mistake you
13:48can have a fall down but when you get back up and keep going you learn from it and you grow and you keep going that’s
13:54the most important part quitting is the absolute failure because you stop so I
13:59never want to quit you know that may be a character flaw at
14:04times but I I’m I just don’t give up easily I never have in my life and and I
14:10think that’s part of the resiliency and necessity of being an entrepreneur um you face too many
14:17hurdles and challenges as an entrepreneur so if you give up easily if you if you quit easily it’s not the
14:24right goal for you it’s not the right thing to pursue that is so true I mean the the
14:29one thing that is constant as an entrepreneur is change and the need for resilience to with those two um all the
14:36time and you’re right you know if you if you’re not up for um failure and the
14:42things not going right it’s not it’s not a good career chice to have because you
14:47have to face all of those don’t you and find that way through but so how do you
14:52measure success for yourself wow so it’s funny I I’ve said
14:58this many times to people I think I’ve achieved everything I’ve set out to achieve except the financial success
15:03that I’ve dreamt about and it’s not that I’m not financially successful it’s more that I keep setting the target higher
15:10and I keep pushing for for different goals but I I do like to take a step back I heard this a few months ago have
15:17you ever stopped and thought about the fact that you’ve achieved so many goals you set out already and to be proud of
15:23those things so we have we have built an incredible company I measure the success
15:29of my company in terms of our company culture which is a reflection of how my my employees feel and work and are
15:37engaged but it’s also a reflection of how our customers feel um just as an example our net promoter
15:44score NPS score is consistently over 84 and really for the last nine months all
15:50the surveys come back at 100 it it’s just kind of crazy our customer satisfaction score for the first six
15:57months of this year has been 100 100% and last year it was 84% the year before that it was
16:0383% so I look at those things and I say we must be doing the right things for our customers because they’re satisfied
16:11they’re giving us this positive response also I feel I mean here we are in year 23 of business so we’ve been doing this
16:17for a while I also feel like another measurement of our success is the fact that we keep growing and our customers
16:24keep referring us our name is getting further out there in the marketplace there’s more opportunities popping up
16:29things that we don’t even anticipate they just come to us because we’re doing the right things so I don’t worry about
16:36the money I mean I say I haven’t achieved everything I want except money I don’t worry about that because it’s coming with every step that we take it
16:43keeps getting better and better and better so I try very hard not to measure it on the financial terms that most
16:50people say oh no did you hit this Revenue number did you hit this profit number we could do all those things it’s it’s more about is your team satisfied
16:57are your customer satisfied are you doing good for the world we’re having a very positive impact we have now
17:03generated over a 100 million forms for our industry that was almost a year ago
17:10um and we have put I forget the number we have put over 60 or 70,000 trees in
17:16the ground to commemorate how many trees we effectively save by the forms we
17:22generate um so yeah I kind of look at it from those perspectives but there’s another one too entrepreneurs are not
17:28ious for working too much and a few years ago I got to a point where I work 25 hours a week very effectively with my
17:35team I’ve since increased it because I started my podcast there’s other things I’m doing we launched a new product but
17:42I honestly I don’t work over 40 hours a week ever I I and here’s the contrary to
17:47that for the first 12 years of this business I worked 80h hour weeks I really overworked myself and I learned
17:54the hard way that hard work is not just the answer and in fact I was doing a lot of things that weren’t necessary because
18:01I thought if I work more hours I’ll be more successful the truth is when I started delegating and started pushing
18:08things off my plate to others and trusting them and empowering them to do their best work not just me to do my
18:13best work that’s when things started to grow so I also measure success from the
18:18standpoint of what is my personal life balance and how much time can I spend with my kids and my wife and doing other
18:25things that I want to do so those are the things look at I love that because I think I think you’re right it’s it’s in
18:31the round and you I love the piece on around the business around making sure that the colleagues are happy and and
18:37the clients are happy because I’ve always thought you know as a leader um my clients are actually my team so if
18:45I’m doing if I’m doing what they need they’re going to be a better place to do what the client needs which is
18:51ultimately going to make the company successful but we sometimes forget that that cycle it sounds like you’ve got
18:56that going swimmingly and and actually I know with moving to for myself from
19:03being in big corporate jobs to working for myself one of the greatest gifts back was spending more time with my
19:08little girl but you’re right it has to be intentional because we get ourselves stuck in that trap don’t we like I’ll
19:14just do more and more and more and I fill my time and actually sometimes when you ask people why are you doing that
19:21can I’m just interested what value does that add and you see them look I I don’t know I’ve just been I’ve just been too
19:27busy to realize that I’m doing some things that actually add no add no value
19:34um yeah taking that it’s it’s taking that conscious look isn’t it to look at it and go which bits of this do I need
19:39to delegate and which bits of this can I just dump because actually they’re just not needed any
19:45they’re not gonna help add value how do you how do you make sure you maintain
19:50that intentional focus on what you do I I I think it’s my role is to set
19:57the vision for the company and I do set that vision and every year we talk about the theme for this year and what our
20:04what our goals are for this year and I have every person on the team set their own goals and we review them this year
20:10we didn’t do it publicly as much but they’re all available for everybody to read um and we talk about what we did
20:16well last year that we want to keep doing so for myself it’s it’s really I
20:22mean I wake up every day start my day with what am I what’s the one thing I’m going to achieve today what’s the one
20:28thing I have have to get done and I look at the week the same way I align my company that way every Monday morning we
20:34have an all team meeting uh we call it the Stand and Deliver meeting it I have
20:40what do I have I have eight or nine people who report and we usually finish
20:45the meeting within 20 minutes so this is not a long meeting everybody everybody says here’s what I was doing last week
20:51here’s what I’m doing this week here are some challenges or blockers that are coming up like team members aren’t going to be here whatever um it’s really great
20:59for everybody to hear about what’s going on in the company and what people are working on but it’s also an accountability because if you’re saying
21:06the same thing every week that this is my week’s goal is the same as the last eight weeks what are you
21:12doing right and you have public pressure because you’re airing it out to everybody so I think that you know some
21:19of these practices but just overall the vision setting and intention of here’s
21:24where we’re trying to get to and then just keep pushing for that through the weekly meetings and and the product
21:31development I I think that that’s a lot of it but I guess also I personally I
21:37just have I’ve always had really big goals I I’ve I’ve often joked I have enough ambition for the whole company so
21:44I I just keep thinking about how do I get to where I want to take this and you know frankly I’ve always felt like I
21:50could build a billion- dooll company we’re not close to that by any stretch of the imagination but I still feel it’s
21:55100% possible even though we’re 20 three years old and haven’t done it I still think we can so we keep striving I love
22:03that and actually it’s that drive to keep going isn’t it to say I still believe in the dream because I think
22:09that’s the bit and the dream’s bigger than us was it um Thomas Edison who said he didn’t find a way to make the light
22:16bulb he found 10,000 ways not to make the light bulb but his belief that it could still be done meant didn’t matter
22:23how many years it took or how many tries it took it it was still going to keep going and it’s sounds like you’ve got
22:29that drive in you to say actually we can still get there and I’m going to not
22:36stop until until we do you know there’s another aspect to this and I and I think it was Zig Ziggler who said you can have
22:42anything you want if you help enough people get what they want and to me that points to the idea that I didn’t build a
22:50product to sell I built a product to solve a problem so why would I stop with
22:55solving it for 100,000 people if I could solve it for 100 million people why would I stop now there’s too many
23:01people who hate filling out forms so why stop on that Journey now when we can go
23:07help more people and to me that’s that’s it’s one of the most amazing things I’ve
23:12been to conferences and trade shows where people come up and tell me you have changed my life I don’t have to
23:18work so hard I don’t have to do this thing I hated to do I enjoy working with my clients more I mean my very first
23:25customer went had a a staff person 40 hours a week handwriting forms went to
23:31down to four hours a week within two weeks of using our product and called us
23:36practically crying she’s like you’re going to change my life and I I felt like and I am an author but prior to
23:42being an author and I’ve never had this experience as an author frankly but I felt like I was one of those best-selling authors signing books
23:48people were coming up like oh my gosh you had this great impact and so to me that’s also what drives me I love love
23:55solving this problem with people and I love seeing how our customers take what we’ve offered and turn it into wonderful
24:02solutions for their users and in part I love it because it’s an excellent business model they become
24:08very successful and they don’t want to leave us but I also love it because I know I’m improving their lives which
24:13improve the lives of people they work with K this has actually became very personal at one point I had a customer I
24:21was working with them and they were trying to solve this data problem so they could fill out forms better and
24:27look I I’m not really supposed to know these things but I could they were showing me this date on their screen and
24:32I saw my uncle’s name on there his name is very unique and I said can we scroll to the right and I looked at the address
24:38I’m like oh my gosh you are my uncle’s advisor I’m helping you get more time so
24:45you can serve my uncle better that’s amazing like my family is benefiting because my software is helping the
24:51advisers they work with it it’s unreal to me I love that I love that the drive
24:57is about helping people because I think that’s the thing isn’t it is if what we’re doing is actually helping somebody
25:02to achieve something for them then why would we stop why would we why would we
25:08not do it you I I often think you know if I share my story if it helps just one
25:14person it’s worth doing it’s worth doing so that you can actually help other
25:19people meet whatever it is that they’re looking to do so what would you say is the thing you’re most proud of so far
25:28I’d say my company culture is one of the proudest achievements we have culture is
25:34a really really hard thing it it’s hard because it’s hard to be clear on what your culture is I know so many companies
25:40they in year 8 10 12 they’re like oh we should Define our company culture let’s get a consultant and figure it out and I
25:47didn’t start that way I started with culture before I even started my company I knew the four things that would
25:52Empower me to do my best work and I felt like if I could write those things down
25:59and push that as the company kind of tenants then eventually I could drive a company culture that would embody that
26:06and I would attract people who want the same thing um just by the way those four things and they’re all equal we all love
26:13what we do I don’t mean we love every task but we love the roles that we’re in um two we do what we say we’re going to
26:19do it’s a matter of integrity and transparency and accountability three
26:25we’ve designed software and solutions that are so easy to use it doesn’t require a user guide it needs to be
26:30intuitive it needs to be obvious and fourth we provide outstanding service at all levels and it has to be outstanding
26:37service in fact I’ve learned if you don’t provide a better service than your products features or performance you
26:44can’t win if you really want to excel you have to provide better service put those four things together and and for
26:51us what it turns out to and by the way I mean this really took 10 to 12 years of my company forming and growing to get
26:58get to a point where it was taking root and now we’re it’s so strong it’s taking root everywhere and we hire for this but
27:05but the reality is people are doing their best work because they love what they do they know everybody else is
27:12going to do what they say they’re going to do so they have this transparency and accountability with each other the outstanding service starts within so
27:19everybody on the team is serving everybody else with this excellence and and positivity and yes let me help you
27:25let’s I’ll stop everything I got to do to help you um this when I say design Solutions
27:31that’s internally as well we’re designing processes for ourselves that make our jobs more enjoyable and and
27:38more interactive and more engaging so the result is people are doing their best work what do you get with somebody’s best work you get the best
27:45you get their happiness you get their engagement so I have a highly engaged highly productive team and the majority
27:51of them I I would say nine out of 10 of them at least will tell you if you ask them this is the last company they want
27:57to work for I I mean what better thing can you have so to me that’s one of the best
28:04accomplishments is that this Vision I had about company culture has actually taken root turned into reality and is a
28:11Bedrock foundation for my company I love that what a great achievement as well because that impact
28:18you know we we know if we’re happy at work we’re happy we’re happier everywhere else as well because we have
28:24to go to work but if we can love what we’re doing and be happy happy and feel valued while we’re doing it then
28:31actually it feels less like work it feels more joyful and and you change the
28:36energy don’t you around yourself and around everybody that comes into contact with you so for you to have created that
28:43for your people and all the people that they then serve is an amazing achievement I can see why you’d be
28:49really proud of that well and I think this is why we get such high ratings from our customers because they feel it
28:56and and we’ve had three different outside companies do surveys of our Market they talk to co customers
29:03and Prospects and every single time we did that over you know 12E period three different times every single time the
29:10surveys come back reflecting our company culture we hear comments like oh we love working with quick because they’re they
29:16they’re so fun or we can always count on them to get things done or man their
29:21products are so easy to use like the training is super easy we don’t even have to do training most of the time or
29:27and the same the service like we know we’re going to get excellent service when we talk to them they’re the ones
29:32who pick up the calls they’re the ones who actually follow through they’re the ones that show up at two o’clock as they said they would all those types of
29:38things are reflection of our company culture which then makes me argue something that I don’t know that
29:44everybody argues when people talk about brand I I love how some other people have said it um brand is your promise
29:52what you’re promising to your customers brand is also an emotional predisposition that you create with somebody like with Nike brand you just
29:58feel like you can do more because you’re wearing Nike shoes right well that that’s really hard to establish when you
30:05have a business like mine which is not a commercial retail brand it’s a businessto business behind the scenes
30:12brand what is the brand I say our brand is our culture and that’s what our
30:18promise is our promise is what our culture delivers on so to me it all kind of comes together and I didn’t start out
30:25this way I never in fact I didn’t understand brand until about 10 years in I knew it was important to start
30:31building it but I didn’t know what it was and I’d argue I really didn’t correlate brand with culture until about
30:36a year ago because I started to see the effects of it I love that because it is it is true
30:43you know I brand is in everything that we is what we promise and whether or not we live up to that promise um is it’s
30:50going to impact everything that we do and clearly with with what you’re doing that is underpinning your promise to
30:57your people is also your promise to your customers and that’s why they’re aligning so beautifully yeah if there
31:04was anything if you could go back and um give your younger self some advice what
31:09would it be wow one of one of the I I’d say biggest turning points in my career is
31:17when I started listening to audiobooks and man I heard the advice people are like Rich you need to read
31:23more and the problem was my brain has two processes running at all times I can’t just read I have to listen to
31:30music and read and I just didn’t like reading I I could read one book a year that’s all I could stomach and and so I
31:37kept pushing it off and plus I had this arrogance of of I’m smart I know what I’m doing boy did I not know what I was
31:43doing so when I finally got audiobooks and started listening to audiobooks things started changing so much faster
31:51and a friend of mine related to me earlier this year she said that your
31:56company’s growth is a direct reflection of your personal growth I mean especially as a leader and as an
32:02entrepreneur and so back I think it was around 2014 is when I caught on to audiobooks and I started going through
32:09at least one book a month if not one a week at times and reading things like the four disciplines of execution which
32:17teach you about how to you actually execute inside your business not just build a strategy uh one of my favorite
32:22books is by Chris Voss U never split the difference and yeah I and and and
32:29there’s so many other books I’ve read and and so they’ve I think that really
32:34empowered me to grow more um and I I wish I had done that earlier so even
32:41though I heard the advice I would somehow try to get my head wrapped around it sooner if I could have oh I
32:48love that and I’m an avid um audio book uh reader I I do mine on the dog walk
32:55every day because it’s like I can fit a good half an hour and Sport the dog enjoy nature and learn something at the
33:02same time whereas before I was always in the oh I’ll schedule in some time well that never happened with audio books you
33:09can take them wherever you go they go with so I love that great advice I could
33:14literally chat to you all day but I am conscious of time so how can people get in touch with you we’ll make sure it’s
33:20all in the show notes but what’s the best way people can reach out so you can find me on LinkedIn I’m the quick forms
33:27CEO um if you want to email me that’s fine it’s rwalker quick forms.com Qi KF
33:35rms.com and look I’ll tell you this about LinkedIn I have a kind of a basic rule if you want to connect with me send
33:43me a personal note say something of Interest don’t just hit connect and
33:48expect me to connect because I I’m sold to all the time I’m sure we all are but if you really want to talk to me I love
33:54to talk to people in fact my second book which we didn’t talk about is how to get the job that you love and deserve and
34:00perform your best in I give it away for free just connect with me and ask for it
34:05and I will send it to you that’s awesome Rich it has been a delight as it always
34:11is thank you so much for sharing such insight and such great stories with me
34:17and with the audience and I look forward to our next conversation Kim me too
34:22thank you so much for having me today this was a lot of fun and I appreciate it pleasure you take care
34:29[Music]