We were lucky to catch up with David Richardson recently and have shared our conversation below.
David, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
The short answer – from losing and embracing it.
The longer answer has to do with experiences that I’ve gone through in my life, my approach to those experiences, and how I reacted to losing when it was part of the experience.
I grew up playing sports as a child, like most people, and I played all the sports that I could: basketball, soccer, baseball, football, and tennis. It was my experience with tennis that shaped me into the person I am today. Tennis taught me that you had to go through loss on your own with no excuses. You couldn’t blame anyone else, and if you were getting your butt kicked, you had nowhere to hide. There were only two ways to get off that court: beat them or take a beating. This is where I learned the value of taking a beating and how it played a major role in my growth on and off the court.
To get better, you have to surround yourself with people who are better than you. In an individual sport like tennis, that meant that you were going to lose a lot to those better players. I embraced that journey. I got to a point where I loved getting my butt kicked by someone better than me because I knew one day I was going to reach their skill level just by being on the same court as them.
That childhood experience playing tennis prepared me for the tenacious corporate world. I approached business knowing that I was going to have bumps, bruises, and even scars from the losses I would take, but that those losses HAD to be part of the journey. This made it easier after a bad interview or a bad new business pitch or after getting fired for the first time. It was all part of the journey to where I wanted to go, and I wear those losses proudly.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I am currently building a B2B Growth Consulting Firm called R Squared Group. We bootstrapped this business from Day 1 and it’s doubled in size every year. We have had the pleasure of working with some of the biggest brands and scrappiest, high-growth companies on some major foundational business challenges that include brand positioning, demand generation, sales enablement and revenue consulting.
We are still just getting started and can’t wait for what the future has in store for our company and our clients!
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
People Skills – I have been lucky enough to have a strength in good people skills and this is the number 1 reason I have had the success I have had so far. Having good people skills helps your career on so many levels. The ability to connect with complete strangers quickly and create a lasting impression helps open doors today and way later down the road in the future. The biggest reason our firm has had success is because of strong connections made because of good people skills.
Ability to Sell – Tied to the hip of “people skills”, the ability to sell something/anything has been one of the most helpful skills I’ve sharpened over the years. I know that most people don’t like selling because they think that it is some door-to-door, product pushing skillset but it’s not. It’s about uncovering deep problems and providing a solution. It’s about helping someone. Lastly, no matter where your career takes you, you are going to have to sell. Pitching yourself in an interview, selling an idea to your team or actually selling a product or service.
Empathy and Doing What is Right – Doing the right thing and showing empathy in the corporate world can lead to some of the toughest decisions you will make. The value of money and job security will challenge everyone in their careers when faced with a decision where they know the right thing to do but it might jeopardize their money or job security. Doing the right thing and showing empathy is always the right answer. It might “hurt” you in the short-term but it will always payoff over time.
What would you advise – going all in on your strengths or investing on areas where you aren’t as strong to be more well-rounded?
Early in your career, it’s better to be well-rounded. We constantly see younger people make the decision in college for what they want to do for the rest of their career without ever experiencing the real world of that career. I am constantly meeting people that change their career completely because they just didn’t like what they were doing. A doctor that started a beauty product company. A lawyer that built a SaaS company for the shipping industry. A developer that is now crushing it selling coolers out of his garage.
The bottom line is that you just don’t know where your career is going to take you. Here is the way to approach your career.
Keep gaining new skillsets and try new industries/jobs until you find the one you are really good at or that you really enjoy. This is the moment that you go “all-in” on developing strengths and skills around that type of career.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.rsquaredgroup.com
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmichaelrichardson/
